MAUD HARDING

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Winsford, Somerset, 1913

LIVED: Winsford, Stoke Pero

RECORDING MADE: 1998

RECORDING LENGTH: 1 hour 45 minutes

Maud Harding's grandfather had a builders yard at Winsford. She worked in the office there, three mornings a week, after she left school. He was one of the first people to have a car and Maud, at 16, would drive him round, or go out to the woods with the men to beat his initials into the felled timber. She wanted to be a driver in the army, but married instead. She loved driving and later drove the hospital car service.

She was brought up at Torre Farm. After she married she went to farm at Stoke Pero, and then back again to Torre when her parents retired and moved into Winsford. The pattern repeated itself when her husband retired and their son, Richmond, took over.

When she was younger she played table tennis, and cricket for Wheddon Cross ladies team. They were a sportier lot than Winsford, she says. She goes short mat bowling now.

Maude Harding died in 2004.

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury