ME AND MY LISTED HOUSE


Daphne keeps some of her treasures in rather odd places. This set of antique plates occupies a corner of the space she calls ‘the animal room’


A simple device that Daphne sells. It is fitted inside the front of a car and develops a special sound which warns off animals at speeds of upwards of 60km/h


that the native otters were just dying out. It resulted in the law being changed in 1991 and things have improved very greatly for the English otter since then. Even so 2,000 otters are killed on our roads every year. This usually happens at night when the two year-old otters have left mother and are seeking new territory. To find water they usually have to cross roads and that is when they get killed by vehicles.


I am currently promoting a small inexpensive device that develops a special sound which warns off animals at speeds of upwards of 60km/h and can be fitted easily to any make of car. It costs just a few pounds. I sent one to Michael Gove the other day.


So in recent years I have carried on with the otter work and taken the odd acting job. The house was also used quite a lot in the 1990s as a location, often for TV advertisements. Nowadays I am only really cast in drama parts for my wrinkles; but I am still open to offers!


The acting has often had to take second place to the family except when I worked in Wales. When I was in my early thirties I had a two year contract with Harlech Television. It was a twice weekly magazine programme


which I fronted together with my old friend Jan Leeming When Jan took that over on her own I presented a daily childrens’ programme called ‘It’s Time for me’. I used to read a story, showed animals and had a ‘how to make’ spot. My parents came here to look after the girls while this went on. But really Martin was always the breadwinner.


Maintaining the building has been more of a problem since Martin died. He was an immensely practical man – getting rid of the 300 tonnes of stone in the front garden when we came was entirely his job – and he knew how to get things fixed even if he was unable to do the fixing himself in the years before he died at the age of 86.


After his death from pancreatic cancer in April 2015 we kept his body here until he was buried. We put him in the shed in his coffin in his best gardening clothes surrounded by blossoms and kept cool by ice blocks and the stream running underneath. Fortunately it was very cold weather. We had his memorial stone cut by a leading Cotswold stone carver. It bore his family crest. We had mine cut at the same time, only missing out the last two digits!


Daphne adopted Rudi at the age of three weeks. He is now 12


94 Listed Heritage Magazine September/October 2018


I am hoping to have exactly the same treatment when I pop my clogs and to be buried beside him in the graveyard of the little church in the village up the hill. We were married 57 years.”


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