HORACE CRANG

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Martinhoe, Devon, 1912

LIVED: Martinhoe

RECORDING MADE: 2001

RECORDING LENGTH: 2 hours 6 minutes

Horace Crang has never been further than Torquay and has never owned a car. Like his father before him, he was born at Slattenslade Farm. He did the milk round before going to school and helped with the cows again in the evening. After he left school he worked at home.

He was in the Home Guard in the war, carrying out night manoeuvres on Woody Bay beach. Then his mother died and his father sold the farm. He didn't know what he was going to do but the May brothers, who had bought it, asked him to run it. So he got married and moved back in. When he was 71 they suggested he retired and he bought Slattenslade bungalow.

There are 20 or more Crangs buried in Martinhoe churchyard, but without transport he can't get to church much now. He says he doesn't know the names of his neighbours any more, though they seem friendly enough.

Horace Crang died in January 2006.

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury