LESLIE NORMAN

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Withiel Florey, Somerset, 1919

LIVED: Withiel Florey

RECORDING MADE: 2001

RECORDING LENGTH: 9 hours 8 minutes

Where to start with Leslie Norman? He talked for nine hours and even then barely scratched the surface. He farms at Gupworthy, on the Brendons, and comes from a long line of farmers. His greatest pride is in family partnerships, from his grandparents, through his parents, to himself and his children.

He has a wonderful memory going back generations and tells stories not only about his parents and grandparents but about the whole area; Brendon Hill mines, chapel, the farming cycle, what things cost, who worked there, what they did, what they said to him. Stories about his grandmother, who came from Wales to Luxborough as a barmaid and stood no nonsense from the rough lot of miners who drank there; about wartime, the Home Guard and German POWs; about grass seed experiments and quarter evil. And about sitting on an upended bucket in the stable as a boy listening to Arthur Hole, the carter, as he helped him clean the harness.

Leslie Norman died in July 2009.

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury