Painting Patchwork
The Red Lion
Brigitte Tardy
After much refurbishment during the quieter winter months the Red Lion is roaring towards the summer season. With new décor and carpets where needed in the bedrooms together with new showers in some rooms, Brigitte and her staff are looking forward to welcoming their guests. Of course The Red Lion multi-tasks and serves as the village shop and post office as well as obviously being a public house with letting rooms. They also serve morning coffee, afternoon teas and a choice menu of tasty dishes. You can even catch-up with your emails using their free wi-fi service!
The summer menu, specialising in fish dishes, is now running and for visitors renting holiday cottages and villagers alike they also offer a take-away service. To order, telephone between 5pm and 8pm for collection between 6pm and 9pm, minimum order £10.
Locals will be pleased to know that the problems the Post Office experienced over the Christmas period and early months of the year with its on-line services have now been fixed with up-grading of the facilities so as Brigitte says ‘Normal service is now resumed!’ A cash withdrawal service operates with partner banks including Alliance & Leicester, Barclays, Co-operative, Halifax, Nationwide, Bank of Ireland, Clydesdale and Lloyds TSB. A&L and Co-op Banks are directly on-line so the service with them is also extended to depositing money and balance of account.
The full range of Walls ice creams and lollies plus Langage ice cream together with buckets, spades and crabbing lines will be of interest to children and the adults (males probably in particular) will be pleased to know the choice of ales has been extended to include Dartmoor IPA which is currently on a special offer and Ipplepen Brewery’s beer - Crackshot which is a lighter ale ideal for the walkers passing through the village at lunchtime. They look forward to seeing you!
Fingals Hotel
Richard & Sheila Johnston
Eccentric, quirky, unique, relaxed, different – Fingals is all of these and much, much more! A handsome Grade 2 listed Devon farmhouse which is mentioned in the Domesday Book, Fingals has been family owned and run by Richard Johnston for the past 30 years. Richard & Sheila have lovingly transformed the farmhouse into a luxurious country house hotel nestling in a very tranquil valley set back from the River Dart. As soon as you step through the front door you experience the warmth, relaxation and comfort which seems to hug you as you arrive! It is a home away from home.
The hotel offers a choice of accommodation in 11 plush ‘boutique style’ en-suite rooms. The Stream Room is an entirely new ‘eco’ building on the Barbary Water, overlooking a little natural woodland wilderness where guests can sleep under velvety skies full of stars (there is no light pollution) and wake to the sound of the babbling stream and quacking wild ducks. Built on a Carpenter Oak frame, the building is powered by solar panels with a double layer of natural hemp fiber insulation and a ‘trombe’ wall.
The folly, which is as eccentric as it sounds, was designed by Andras Kaldor a famous Hungarian artist who lives in Dartmouth, and is built from the ruins of a little mill on the Barbery Water - a perfect romantic retreat!
Staying at Fingals is a very relaxed affair. Breakfast is served (any time after nine) with locally sourced organic bacon, free-range eggs from my chickens, local sausages, freshly squeezed orange juice, kippers, home baked croissants and local jams and honey. Guests can help themselves in the bar. There is a swimming pool, jacuzzi, spa, sauna, gym, grass tennis court, croquet lawn, snooker/games room and library. Children love it and are made very welcome with ‘high tea’ being served early leaving parents free to socialise and dine with the ‘grown-ups’. As Richard says, ‘It’s a place for meeting and making friends and enjoying life at your own pace.’
Fingals hosts concerts and open air theatre productions during the summer months in the gardens with the next being a production of Romeo and Juliet by the Miracle Theatre Company on Wednesday 9th June.
“Sheila and I are passionate about what we do and we do our own thing without conforming to the norm and, over the years, we have shamelessly stuck to our guns. Fingals is fun, enjoyable and personal – a breath of fresh air.”
For further information: www.fingals.co.uk Tel: 01803 722398
Betty Genn
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in 1924 in Queensland out in the bush where my father owned a sheep and cattle station. I was taught by my mother using the correspondence school course until the age of eight when I had to go away to boarding school. Whilst there I only saw my parents twice a year at Christmas for 9 weeks which was our summer holiday and for 4 weeks during the winter holiday break. The boarding school was in Charters Towers, 80 miles inland from Townsville and it was a mining town which had attracted a lot of Welsh and where the first gold was found and an exchange built.
What was life like at home?
We were 400 miles inland from Townsville, 80 miles from the railway station and the nearest town just had a post office and a pub. My father owned two properties; one of 26,000 acres and the other 18,000 acres mainly sheep on the savannah but also some cattle in the forest country. I was one of six children and I remember mother being very strict and feeding us meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Our water came from artisan bore holes and flowed along open drains which we would love to play in. That’s where they grew banana trees which we were wary of because of the poisonous snakes that lived in them. Outside every door was ‘a snake stick’ and using the ‘two mile’ (outside toilet) was also a worry because of the snakes and spiders. My father who was a big man rode all over his stations by horse and it was an exciting time when the Contract Shearers arrived and thousands of sheep were mustered and brought into the yards and sheds for shearing.
What did you do after your school days?
I was good at physiology so I decided to become a nurse. This meant spending four years doing my general training at Brisbane General Hospital and then nine months doing my midwifery course down in Sydney. One of my positions was as Matron at the ‘local’ hospital after my predecessor (who had been held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war) became a danger! I knew the doctor there as we had done our training in Brisbane at the same time and as Matron it was my job to assist him, give ‘open ether’ anaesthetic, deliver babies, and occasionally the doc and I had to go to help administer help to horses! I also had a job travelling all over Victoria as the nurse attached to the Chest X-ray team and I was part of the team who nursed the released POW’s held by the Japanese. We escorted them from Darwin and they were so extremely traumatised that they needed one to one nursing as we travelled overland through the bush camping each night.
What brought you to the UK?
Nell, my eldest sister, who had been working with long range weapons at Woomera was being transferred to Salisbury Plain as there was no one available at that time with her training in the UK. It was decided I should travel to England with her. Being a trained nurse I found work easily at the medical centre at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. I met my future husband, Bob, in 1951 when we were invited to a drinks party in a Sergeants’ Mess. These chaps walked in dressed in their navy uniforms with a red stripe down the trousers and in their spurs and I asked ‘Did you invite the Fire Brigade then?’ which amused the Sergeants no end and they told their Officers what I had said and we ended the night in the Officers’ Mess! By Christmas we were engaged.
He was a career soldier in the Royal Engineers and I became the service wife supporting my husband and moving with him on his postings. I am also proud of having sewed name tapes on to all Sir Edmund Hillary’s clothing for the ascent of Everest in 1953, Coronation Year. Later that year, just after Helen my eldest was born we were posted to Singapore for three years during which time my daughter Margaret was born. This posting was followed by one in Germany in 1957 which is where my son Ross was born. That was when the Russians were ‘rattling their sabres’ and although I could drive I had to pass a test with the Army and with the Germans just in case I needed to drive other wives and our children if we needed to leave in a hurry! After Germany we were posted to Dover which is when Bob took some cadets to Dartmoor and discovered the area which culminated in us buying a cottage in Dittisham in 1961 where I still live.
Is there a posting which stands out?
Much later in Bob’s career he trained to become a Military Attaché. Whilst he did his course I did a Cordon Bleu cookery course and a course on flower arranging so that I was also suitably trained for the Attachés wife’s duties! We were posted to Hungary for four years which was behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Although the servants in the house were wonderful and lovely people it was also their job to spy on us. We knew that they knew we knew and that the house and car were bugged - the neighbours all reported on us as well! If Bob was going out on one of his ‘jaunts’ we had to be careful not to give any clues away so he’d leave very early before anyone was awake. On one occasion, I went with him as if we were going for a picnic – he actually wanted to look at something close to the Russian border. To to cut a long story short, we were caught by soldiers, held at gun point for almost 12 hours and if I hadn’t eaten a piece of paper which had Bob’s written notes we would have caused a major Diplomatic Incident between Hungary & Great Britain! I certainly won’t forget that!
Colette Charsley - Professional Landscaper and Garden Designer and contributor to By the Dart
Colette remembers that “When the penny dropped it all seemed so patently obvious what I should be doing I couldn’t believe I didn’t do it sooner!”
Born in Somerset, educated at Durham University, and pursuing a successful career for over 20 years in the property world - initially residential sales in Cambridge, she then moved to Devon to work for Knight Frank in the commercial sector. Colette was involved in business transfers, mainly hotels and leisure orientated concerns, and eventually became a partner in the firm. For years she enjoyed this business but increasingly found herself ‘looking’ overly long at gardens, how they were constructed, how the light fell on them, where shadows were cast, how plants worked or didn’t. It was an itch that needed scratching and after speaking with the Principal of Oxford College of Garden Design she had an informal meeting with him that led to a 4 day interview process where she had to prove her worth – and of course she did. She now holds a post graduate diploma in landscape design and architecture.
Colette admits, “Handing in my notice and realising I would have no salary coming in was scary! The course was the hardest thing I have ever done. The learning curve was vertical and the sixteen hour days horrendous – but I loved it. I think my time in the property world gave me an edge, knowing how to read plans, construction techniques and visualize whether something would work or not. I’d also spent my life loving plants, growing them and even knowing their Latin names.” She also knows that the course has somehow validated her ‘looking’ and dragging friends to see something ‘spectacular’. “Seeing patterns and colour and how things relate to each other – that is what design is about after all.”
She has been part of the planting team for two gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show this year which she found terribly exciting and the responsibility enormous. One designed by James Wong who teamed up with Tourism Malaysia and the other for The Children’s Society. “Chelsea planting is not, of course, like normal planting,” Colette says. “It’s theatre, it’s the ‘haute couture’ of the plant and design world – but it is fabulous glorious fantasy that has to be created out of living things that must be in the peak of condition for just five days.”
Her own garden in Dittisham is where she experiments with new ideas and she is so pleased to be living in a community with such interesting people who have done such extraordinary things. ‘The village is so welcoming and I knew I was part of things when I was roped in for belly-dancing in the village pantomime!’
Coombe Farm Studios
Paul and Tina Riley
Coombe Farm Studios, situated on the outskirts of Dittisham, is a leisure painting centre and gallery set up by Paul and Tina Riley in 1983, when they decided to move their family out of London. Their idea was to create an environment where students of any age or ability could combine learning or honing a creative skill whilst enjoying a holiday in one of the most beautiful parts of England. Now Paul and other invited artists offer courses throughout the year to pass on their skills which encompass all painting media, sculptural ceramics and pottery.
Paul is a renowned artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries all over the world. Best known for his watercolours; greatly influenced by China and Japan, his latest project is a series of hand tinted woodcuts – Patchwork Fields, Snowy River and Misty Trees. With advice from Japanese artist friends to procure the necessary tools and brushes to do the job he has produced woodcuts on a grand scale using watercolour rather than the more usual oil based paints. The process certainly required a very steady hand and unlimited patience and skill .The resultant unique prints are then hand tinted by Paul to add depth and atmosphere.
The woodcuts can be seen at Coombe (Dittisham) and at the Coombe Gallery in Foss Street, Dartmouth. Paul will be running a short course in traditional woodcutting techniques at Coombe Farm Studios in November.
As well as a rich programme of courses in Dittisham, Paul also lectures and takes students to paint abroad. He and Tina are shortly off to Venice to conduct a seven day art course there. In the next months he will also be working with Scandinavian students in both Denmark and Sweden. Lecturing on cruise ships has taken Paul and Tina around the world including a memorable trip to Antarctica. They enjoy travelling the world but coming home to Dittisham never loses its appeal. As Paul acknowledges, ‘Not only is it a beautiful village with wonderful people living in it but I am never short of stunning views to paint! We find our students love it here and even after all these years, I still very much enjoy teaching people and introducing them to the special world of art.”
First Published June 2010 By The Dart