LESLIE DELBRIDGE

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Parracombe, Devon, 1915

LIVED: Sandyway, Twitchen, South Molton, Simonsbath, Timberscombe

RECORDING MADE: 2001

RECORDING LENGTH: 3 hours 25 minutes

Leslie Delbridge was brought up at Sandyway. The house was damp, the carpet a piece of sacking, and the veneer peeled off his mother's piano. He used to run the 3 miles to Twitchen school, in spite of having had rheumatic fever. He loved rabbiting and spent hours in the river groping trout. His father was an alcoholic.

He was electronically minded from an early age and a self-taught engineer. He wanted to fly Spitfires in the war but failed the medical so did contracting work for the 'War Ag', the county War Agricultural Executive Committee. Then he set up his own agricultural engineering business in Timberscombe quarry, often working until 2am to finish a job. He never sold anyone a new bit of machinery without stripping it down first to see how it worked. He has sharpened 24,000 sheep shearing blades in a year in the past, he says, but now it's only a few thousand.

Leslie Delbridge died in September 2001.

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury