Here is an extract from the Profile of Elizabeth Rose Moule, who visited America, Italy and Ireland but lived in the same cottage in which she was born at the time of writing this piece. As she said “…there’s something about Thriplow that gets into your bones and it’s always nice to get back to it.”
You can read the rest of her article and see a photograph of her as a young child in volume 1.3 (1992).
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I was born on a very hot day, the 9th of August 1911, in the very same cottage of Cochrane’s farm where I live today. The farm was owned by Arthur Ellis, the big landowner in Thriplow in those days, and had been divided in 1896 or 1897 into three small cottages for the farm workers. My grandmother lived on one side and the Parker family on the other. Mr. Fordham rented the farm from Mr. Ellis and my father was the foreman. He instructed the men every morning and supervised their work throughout the day. There were barns and stables around the farmyard for this was primarily an arable farm growing wheat, barley, potatoes, turnips, mangolds and kohlrabies. There were also large flocks of sheep. There were very many horses at that time and the horsekeepers would be up each morning at 5.30 to prepare them for the day’s work.