STAN CURTIS

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Simonsbath, Somerset, 1927

LIVED: Bridgetown, Simonsbath

RECORDING MADE: 1998

RECORDING LENGTH: 2 hours 3 minutes

Stan Curtis went to school at Exton and then Simonsbath, where Mrs Walker, the teacher, kept her cigarettes and lighter up the leg of her drawers. When he left school he worked for Honeymead and then the Fortescue estate, driving horses. He retired 42 years later, having kept a diary for every year. He thinks the world of the Fortescue family. His father was a shepherd with the estate; his grandfather brushed the paths before Lord and Lady Fortescue rode round.

He helped save the Exmoor Forest Hotel at the time of the Lynmouth flood and played in a dance band for 20 years. He and his wife Millie were friends as children. They married the day after her 21st birthday and moved into the flat above the stables, spending £175 on furniture, with nothing left to buy petrol for the motorbike. They still live in the flat, which he has rent free for the rest of his life. It's worth a bucketful of gold watches, he says.

Stan Curtis died in 2008

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury