A book in which local residents recall their memories of the area has been launched by Withambooks. Featuring numerous recollections of local farmers, as well as an engineer and the wife of a former tea planter, Village Voicesexplores what life was like mainly in Upton Noble’s neighbouring village Witham Friary, but also in the surrounding area, through 12 personal transcripts told in the first person. 

The idea was the brainchild of the Witham Friary History Project, which was founded in 2011 after the annual parish boundary walk held on Rogation Sunday. Following a successful Golden Jubilee weekend exhibition in 2012, producing a book on the village was put firmly on the agenda and it was put together by residents recording oral transcripts with the area’s older villagers. 

“It became obvious that the transcripts were a book in itself,” says designer/editor Chris Chapman. 

The memories, and some of the pictures, featured in Village Voices, date back to the 1920s and include country courtships, wartime, Beeching’s axe, farming life, the local school and its legendary pub, the Seymour Arms, which has been in the same family for three generations and which remains popular today with a number of Upton Noble residents.

Andrew Miller, a Witham Friary resident whose novel Pure won the Costa Best Novel and Book of the Year prize in 2011, has written an evocative Foreword to Village Voices. “The pre-war village was a scraped back place for many: houses where interior plumbing meant a single cold water tap over a Belfast sink, the toilet a wooden seat over a bucket. The last of the outlying farms were connected to the National Grid in the early 1960s. Now street lamps light the turnings of the road; and broadband, however sluggish, feeds computers in rooms where, well within living memory, there was only the glow of paraffin lamps, the flicker of a candle,” writes Andrew.

Village Voices brings to life the landscapes and traditions of this Somerset village, its surrounding district and its personalities, including Norman Crouch whose memories were collected by Chris Chapman shortly before the well known West Country equestrian died. “We looked around: we went all down as far as Devon. We didn’t go to Cornwall, but all over Devon and Somerset. We looked over Wiltshire — looked at loads of places,” says Norman recalling his hunt for his long-time Witham home Grazemoor Farm. “In the end I decided that this [Grazemoor Farm] was what I wanted. I don’t regret it at all. I’ve been here for 52 years. I missed the wife when I lost her. She used to keep the place so spick and span.” 

Village Voices costs £10 and can be purchased directly from the Seymour Arms or on Amazon.