Farm

The village hall in Ashby Magna, 2006.

Mr Bevin: It was a scattered farm, although the house and buildings were right in the centre of the village the land lay three or four different ways from the village into the actual fields. There was one field, he lost a part of it when the [Great] Central Railway came through Leicestershire, and then 40, 50 years later one of his grandsons who owned that particular field lost another slice of it when the M1 came through Leicestershire alongside this old Great Central Railway.

Interviewer: And that was Ashby Magna…?

Mr Bevin: Ashby Magna, yes, against the railway station.

Interviewer: And there was a shop that was part of the farm?

Mr Bevin: Yes, there was an old shop, not a very big one, and the house itself was a funny [?] sort of a place as I understand it, and after he’d been there a year or two the estate rebuilt the farmhouse, and there was a part of the old farmhouse was left as a shop and the original old shop was just derelict. The shop was carried on by my grandmother until she died in 1903, and she’d got three daughters, the two elder ones helped with the shop and the middle one carried on the shop for the rest of her life. She remained there until she was about 91 and came out through old age, and then the shop closed down.

©EMOHA