From Bremridge to Brookside
Published in her 86th year, this is Dorinda Jeynes’ last book in her autobiographical trilogy.
She writes of the experiences leading from her upbringing at Bremridge Farm in Devon during the 1920s, to her present smallholding at Brookside Cottage in Surrey.
The years intervening involved living in Exeter and Worcester Park, on the outskirts of London. During this time Dorinda and her husband Douglas had three children: Jeyne, John and Janet Mary, with whom the years and events unfold, together with many friends and relatives who would visit or stay at various times.
In her own unique and occasionally slightly ‘tongue-in-cheek’ way, Dorinda draws on past events and the ‘way we were’ in the twentieth century. Her own love of countryside and animals is inborn, and the stories of these and a variety of officials met along the way are often amusing. In her early 80s Dorinda was still milking and feeding her own cow.
As with her first two books, Back Along, Up Bremridge and Under the Hills of Bremridge, Dorinda’s early years are reflected on occasionally; with contact remaining through two properties just below Bremridge Farm. There are also photographs to help evoke the characters and period of which she writes.
ISBN: 9781852001056
Size: 217x140mm
Binding: hardback
Length: 144pp
b&w photos
About the author:
Dorinda Jeynes
Dorinda Jeynes was educated at East Village School, Sandford, Devon, and St. Wilfrid ’s Convent School, Exeter. She worked for the War Office in Salisbury, Plymouth Post Office and in Exeter for the Forestry Commission.
As a mother and housewife, still running a small-holding, Dorinda wrote her first book, Back Along, Up Bremridge – A Diary of Times Remembered, after realising how interested her family and young niece, Marilyn, were in the days of ‘candles in the dark and water from the well’.
Her second book titled Under the Hills of Bremridge continued the Bremridge theme, looking into more historical facts of the past as well as detailing her remaining involvement in Devon.
Born in 1918, she was still actively running her Surrey smallholding into her 80s. She was also Secretary for Nutfield Conservation Society, a job she tackled with the same indomitable spirit she has for all aspects of life.
