A Gypsy’s view of Life in the Forest

Article by Anthony Pasmore in ‘New Forest Notes’, New Milton Advertiser and Times, 05 April 2026

A Gypsy’s view of life in the Forest

Some time ago I received a request for permission to include, in a forthcoming publication, an extract from one of my late father’s books. The subject of the extract was the great freeze of 1962-3. I was happy to agree and thought no more about the matter.

Last month I received a copy of the new book – Living in a Kenner (house): My New Forest Romani Gypsy Family by Heather Cooper. If this was perhaps a book I would not have gone out of my way to buy, it was certainly a welcome change from the noxious stream of local authority reports and consultations from which I usually suffer. This was a book that I could actually read. It will be available from the New Forest Heritage Centre from 11th April.

I have to say straight away that I was brought up at a time when the Forest community lived in a state of constant cold war with the local Gypsy camps. Keepers, agisters and police were always trying to limit the activities of those who lived in the half dozen or so compounds. Landowners and residents nearby were in a perpetual state of fear of expected depredations on their property, real or imagined. Ms Cooper’s book therefore gives a rare opportunity to reflect on those days from the opposite side of the social fence which divided the Forest. Her story is derived largely from information supplied by her parents, who were raised in the Shave Green camp, although she herself was born after the compounds were closed down.

The book is a mixture of verse and stories covering life in the camps in the first half of the 20th century and then following her own family and others as they settled into, or struggled with, more conventional life after the 1960s. I am no judge of poetry, so I turned at once to the remaining text.

The Shave Green camp, as it was called, was in fact located in old sand pits on Brockishill, just west of the A337 half way between Lyndhurst to Cadnam. Why it should have been so named is unclear as Shave Green itself is actually nearly a mile further north.

Ms Cooper gives a vivid picture of life in the camp with all its difficulties and hardships, but also a great sense of community and mutual help amongst the residents. There was, for example, no water supply and water had to be collected from a tap a mile away. It follows, of course, that there was no modern sanitation. Accommodation was in flimsy huts made out of poles and fabric or, more luxuriously, in old vehicles. Cooking was in improvised stoves made out of old metal drums and the author tells us that remarkably good meals were produced.

The report of the New Forest Committee of 1947 describes the camps as then hardly reaching the standard of the Stone Age and that is not inconsistent with Ms Cooper’s account.

In those early post-war days, I lived very close to the Shave Green camp and, no doubt like most of the local children, I was warned to keep well away from Brockishill – especially when on my pony. I think this warning had more to do with the quantities of broken glass and sharp metal objects lying about than any direct threat to my safety. I followed the instruction to the letter and not until the camp had closed down did I see these dangers for myself.

Even as late as my early interest in Forest matters, complaints about Shave Green and the other camps came regularly before the Verderers. In 1951, Mr OT Price, a noted hunting gentleman, complained to the court of wire, six feet above the ground, strung between trees in the camp and potentially lethal to horsemen. Mr Terrance Despard of Bartley Manor was a regular complainant about alleged violations of his property by camp residents.

Ms Cooper sees these conflicts through entirely different eyes and that makes her writing unusual and historically valuable. Perhaps her view of Romani life is a little over-rosy in places, just as the recorded opinions of local people may be an exaggeration of the evils of the camp, but this was all a long time ago. Still, she does not shy away from noting some of the more bizarre aspects of camp and post-camp life. It was always alleged that when some residents of the Forest camps were re-housed in nearby villages, they used their new baths for storing coal. I thought this was probably a myth, and certainly the author does not mention it. She does, on the other hand, record the activities on one re-housed woman who was discovered using her WC for washing clothes in and extolling the virtues of this sanitary fitting as a valuable washing machine. Perhaps any of us might have done the same after half a lifetime trudging a mile each day for a meagre water supply.

To buy the book click on the book cover

Revealing Alf Witcher’s Chindit war story

Page from the Summer 2026 Chindit Society newsletter:

New Chindit-Related Books

In June 2025, an enquiry on the WW2Talk forum asked for information about Gunner 11273725 Alfred Witcher who had served with 69 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment in India. Amongst those who replied was the Society’s own historian, Steve Fogden, who was able, alongside other forum members to work out Alfred’s wartime and indeed Chindit service.

Alfred had been posted to 69 LAA in November 1943 after his arrival in India and was then assigned on the 10th February 1944 to X Troop, with the task of manning a battery of the 40mm BOFOR Anti-Aircraft guns situated at each of the four Chindit strongholds during Operation Thursday.

As are the vagaries of war, Alfred was suddenly re-posted to Z Troop and was due to fly into Burma (Aberdeen stronghold) aboard Dakota FL-540 on the 11th April, but in the end did not take this flight.

Fate had certainly intervened that day, as Dakota FL-540 crashed into the hills surrounding the Aberdeen stronghold, killing all but six of the 26 passengers and RAF crew aboard. This tragic story can be read in full within the Autumn 2025 edition of the Chindit Column.

After his great fortune on 11th April, Alfred Witcher (photographed below) continued his active service in India and Burma with 69 LAA until June 1945, when he was posted to the 85th Medium Regiment Royal Artillery, with whom he served up until his repatriation to the United Kingdom in May 1946.

The original search for information about Alfred’s WW2 pathway was instigated by book publisher, Jenny Knowles and wartime researcher, Shane McCormack on behalf of Alfred’s daughter, Heather Cooper, who was in the process of writing a book entitled Living in a Kenner, about her father’s and the Romani Gypsy community’s longtime association with the New Forest.

The book was launched at an event held at the New Forest Heritage Centre in Lyndhurst on the 11th April this year, exactly 82 years after Alfred’s fateful escape from boarding Dakota FL-540.

Author, Heather Cooper recalled:

‘My Dad grew up on Shave Green [compound] in the New Forest and went to war for over three years, serving in India and Burma.

After the war, Dad returned to Shave Green and built a new life together with my Mum, Harriet.

A few years later, the authorities started to move everyone out of the compounds. Mum and Dad, along with my older brothers and sister, were moved to a Nissen hut on Setley Plain, and then later to a house (a kenner) where I was born.

I’ve lived in caravans, a mobile home and a house with my husband, Burt.

We like to keep the traditional Romani ways alive and share them with others. This book is one way of doing that and I hope people will enjoy reading it and learning about our history.’

To buy the book click on: Living in a Kenner: My New Forest Romani Gypsy Family

‘Romany Truths’ – “Is there Hope?”

Romany Truths:

Lamb, Pearce, Scott and Wells families

of Thorney Hill (Hampshire), Holbury, nr Fawley, and Dibden (Hampshire)

by

Patricia Mary Wilson

Article by Ellen Stuart in ‘Romany Routes’ Vol 17, no. 6, March 2026

‘Patricia Wilson has created something unique in this slim volume. It comprises personal memoir; commentary on the appalling treatment of the Romany people of the New Forest in Hampshire; original poetry and beautiful artwork. Remember, this is not an anthology of work from several different writers and artists. Each distinct element demonstrates a different skill from one talented individual.

Patricia (Trish) Wilson

In Chapters 1 to 4, Patricia’s storytelling skills are most evident. Full of detail and anecdotes, the writing is lively, natural and personal. It paints a vivid picture of her family from the point of view of a young daughter and granddaughter, the portraits as clear as the family photographs. These are happy childhood memories, and the Romany village and camp at Thorney Hill is described fondly as the place Patricia went on holiday to visit her grandparents.

The tone changes completely from page 50 when Patricia describes the Romany compounds with her adult voice and understanding. Her anger at the way the community was treated is evident. So too is her pride in her family and all the Romany people who ‘prevailed’ under very difficult conditions.

These different voices are also heard in Patricia’s poems, some focusing on her own memories and experiences, others tackling broader and darker themes such as racism and the Gypsy Holocaust. The poem, ‘Nevi Wesh Romany’, opens with a beautiful image of the ‘Laughter and conversation’ of the New Forest Romany people becoming absorbed into the physical geography of the Forest itself, preserved in this way.

But fears are expressed that their way of life, their customs and language will be lost.

The last line is a question: ‘But is there hope?’. By recording and sharing the history of her own people in Romany Truths, Patricia Wilson has answered that question with a resounding ‘Yes’.’

To buy the book: click on Romany Truths

Alan Langford – Inspired by the New Forest

Alan Langford, New Forest equestrian artist, features in the Friends of the New Forest Association’s FOREST MATTERS Autumn/Winter 2023 publication.

Inspired by the New Forest

‘Alan Langford is a freelance artist and illustrator who specialises in equestrian subject matter.
As a native of the New Forest, he is familiar with its extensive landscapes of open heath and ancient woodland that are frequently depicted in his paintings.
A love of horses and riding, and the struggle to depict action in a convincing, predominantly aesthetic way, is the foremost objective in his paintings.
Alan was born in Hampshire, but went to Australia when his family decided to emigrate there under the popular immigration scheme after the Second World War.
They returned to England after three years and in much depleted circumstances lived in a caravan at Drapers Copse, Dibden, on the edge of the New Forest.
Alan writes, ‘It was there that I met my first Romani gypsies. They were a tough lot, and their toughness became most apparent during the winter of 1962-63. Everyone on that caravan camp had a hard time that winter.’ [extract from Alan’s book, WELGORA published by LittleKnollPress.com]
His close contact with the local Romani community, whose relationship with the Forest can be traced back for Centuries, has left an empathetic influence on his art. Images of the Romani Welgoras (horse fairs) and Atchin Tans (temporary camps) often feature in his paintings.
After a footloose career wandering from one unskilled job or another in Australia and the UK he finally embarked on a serious course of part-time study at Southampton College of Art. He qualified to study as a full-time student on the college’s Foundation Course, but had to let this opportunity pass because his absence from the UK while wandering in Australia exempted him from any grant entitlement.
He finally found work as a full time illustrator and since then has illustrated comics, encyclopaedias, history books and classical novels.’

Alan Langford paints at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth

Alan starts his painting at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.

Equestrian artist, Alan Langford, demonstrated painting at the ‘Animals in Art and Nature’ evening at Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth.

In just over two hours Alan completed a watercolour of gypsy horses, while finding plenty of time to talk to visitors as well.

The evening celebrated the summer 2023 exhibition ‘In Her Own Voice’ which brought together a stunning selection of works by the famous equestrian painter, Lucy Kemp-Welch, at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.

Poster by Lucy Kemp-Welch depicting Robert Baden-Powell’s horse ‘Black Prince’.

If you think you’ve never heard of Lucy Kemp-Welch, think again … she illustrated the first edition of Anna Sewell’s classic book ‘Black Beauty’, using Baden-Powell’s horse Black Prince as the model for Black Beauty.

Alan Langford was gripped by the same desire as Lucy Kemp-Welch to capture in paint the power and movement of horses, and their special relationship with people.

Alan writes in his book ‘WELGORA’ …

Illustration from Alan’s book ‘WELGORA’.

‘In the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, hangs Lucy Kemp-Welch’s eight foot long canvas, entitled The Gypsy Horse Drovers, which she painted when she was still an art student under the tutorage of Herbert Von Herkomer RA. The idea for the painting occurred to her when she saw the approach of a number of heavy-hoofed cobs, driven by tough-looking Romani riders along a muddy country lane, under a grey wintry sky.
Rushing from her lodgings with palette and brushes in hand, and the lid of her paint box to serve as a paint board, she executed a swift, skilful composition as this irregular, rampant procession proceeded before her.
Following this exciting encounter and full of the energetic enthusiasm that compels artists when embarking on a project that interests them deeply, she ordered an eight foot long, stretched canvas and set about composing her figures against the landscape. The confidence required to undertake such a task using only a hastily prepared oil study for reference was quite extraordinary, and Lucy was only in her early twenties at the time.
Some eighty years later, I stood before this astonishing painting, skin hot from sunburn, salty sand trapped between my toes, and rolled damp towel tucked under my arm … I was completely transported to that cold, muddy lane with its grazing and rearing horses as recorded by Lucy Kemp-Welch all those years ago.’

When you visit Bournemouth, don’t miss going to see Lucy Kemp-Welch’s magnificent painting ‘The Gypsy Horse Drovers’ at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.

Artists inspired by the New Forest

Three popular books reduced in price on this website.

The New Forest Artist’s books (links below) are wonderful to browse through and read, and will tempt you to visit our beautiful New Forest.

3 artist’s books

A Lifetime in Postcards by Gervase A Gregory

My Story in Colour by Suzan Houching

WELGORA by Alan Langford

Jack Hargreaves’ favourite books

Jack’s fan photo

Jack Hargreaves is best known to us as the face and voice of the television series Out of Town and Old Country.

Born in 1911, Jack started his long media career in 1931, writing technical material for Unilever Livestock Foods. He then became a feature journalist for The Express and The Mirror, moving on to work as a journalist for early radio, a copywriter for an advertising agency and a variety show writer for the Windmill Theatre and the Fortune Theatre. All of this was before he was called up in 1939 to the Royal Artillery, where eventually he was given the task of developing forces radio.

Jack second from left, wearing the bow tie

After the War, Jack was asked by BBC television to gather details of battles so they could collate the film material they had from various theatres of war. In 1946 he went on to write scripts and plays for BBC radio broadcast, and then worked for Picture Post before moving on to the National Farmers’ Union. It was Rosser Reeves who started Jack’s television career, head hunting him for his company Hobson Bates.

Jack’s influence was profound through the formative years of independent television right up to the mid 1980s when the Old Country series was made for Channel 4. It’s not surprising that he was a great lover of books and even found the time to write some:

Jack also had some favourite books to which he referred and some, mentioned in his biography Jack’s Country, are still obtainable today:

There are over 130 titles in the Collins New Naturalist Library series. The range can be appreciated by the unfinished list below:

Garden Birds, Uplands and Birds, Pembrokeshire, Ferns, Gulls, British Bats, Lichens, Dragonflies, Early Humans, Vegetation of Britain and Ireland, The Soil, The Natural History of Orkney, Hedgehog, British Tits, Nature Conservation, Sea Birds, Mosses and Liverworts, The World of the Honeybee, The British Amphibians and Reptiles, Marches, Terns, Wild Orchids of Britain, Cormorants and Shags, Mountains and Moorlands, Wye Valley, Farming and Birds, Butterflies, The Natural History of Shetland, Southern England, Gower, Shallow Seas, the Redstart, Wildfowl, The Folklore of Birds, The Herring Gull’s World, Grass and Grassland, Lords and Ladies, Life in Lakes and Rivers, Britain’s Structure and Scenery, Farming and Wildlife, Trees, Woods and Man, The Natural History of Pollination, Moths, The New Forest, British Warblers, The Natural History of Wales, Waders, Slugs and Snails, British Thrushes, The Isles of Scilly, The Hebrides, Hedges, British Seals, The Broads, Wild Flowers of Chalk and Limestone, The Snowdonia National Park, Seashore, Sea-Birds, Beetles, …………..

World Book Day 2020 – Jack Hargreaves

It’s WORLD BOOK DAY today!

With the rain coming out of the sky again, I wonder how many of you will be buying a new book or re-reading a favourite book?

Jack with Ghost

Jack Hargreaves was a great lover of words and books. He read and wrote a lot, but most of us remember him in his TV programmes, Out of Town and Old Country.

Jack had an amazing ability to weave a story from the most ordinary of scenes.

Gone Fishing

He saw and knew things about the people and workings of the countryside, and long before ‘green’ issues were highlighted, he understood the threats that modern life was bringing to the environment.

This understanding was rooted in the deep love of the countryside that he developed as a child, a love that he discovered due to the wise actions of his mother.

ISBN: 9780992722043

In the book Jack’s Country the author Paul Peacock writes about Jack’s troubled childhood days:

Jack – a studio portrait

‘Jack seemed unable to settle down, obey orders or even behave in a civilised manner and his father was simply unable to understand him. Toys would be thrown, windows smashed and every attempt to correct this seemed doomed to failure, resulting in yet more delinquency. The situation was exacerbated by his father’s reaction to Jack, which he misunderstood to be proof of his dislike for him. Jack’s brother, Ron, suggested there might be a medical problem. Psychiatry was often the only recourse for the middle classes to deal with unusual behaviour. This was still the age of family committals to mental institutions and something prompted Jack’s mother to see if anything medical could be done. In her desperation, she took Jack to see a psychiatrist.

The visit was of little benefit. Jack was an extremely unhappy child and he did not respond favourably to being addressed by a stuffy old psychiatrist. He would probably have remained so if his mother had dismissed an inkling of something special she saw in him. Jack frequently spent long hours, even as a very young boy, wandering the lanes and fields of what has now become known as West Yorkshire’s Last of the Summer Wine country, exploring fields and scaling hills.

It was this knowledge that brought her to believe he might enjoy a holiday on a farm. The family had a long term friendship with a south country farmer and so at length he became a guest of a friend of the family at the farm of Victor Pargeter. This man was to become one of the key influences for a character referred to as the ‘Old Man’ in Jack’s later writings.’

The Nilgiris Library, Ooty

Jenny Knowles with Kamala Ramchand on the steps of the Nilgiri Library. The link with Kamala to the book Cor Blimey! Where ’ave you come from? written by Jenny’s mother Winifred Tovey seemed very fitting as Winnie’s best friend was also called Kamala.

It was the serendipity of social media which put me in touch with artist and author, Saaz Aggarwal, and through her, with Kamala Ramchand of the Nilgiri Library Book Club, Ooty (also called Udhagamandalam).

ISBN: 9780956535931

I felt greatly honoured to be asked to meet with the Book Club members and present to the library a copy of my mother’s book, Cor Blimey! Where ’ave you come from?

In the book my mother, Winifred Tovey, wrote about our lives in India from 1951 to 1967. Dad’s work as a medical missionary at Holdsworth Memorial Hospital, Mysore, connected us with many places and people, from palaces to village huts, and from maharajas to beggars.

My siblings and I went to school in the Nilgiris, bringing mixed memories, the best of holidays that my mother wrote about:

‘Carrington was unique. The bungalow perched on the side of a small hill within a huge valley. The ground fell away quite steeply from the front aspect, giving a magnificent view overlooking the tea plantation. Deep down on the opposite slope nestled the tea factory. More mountains rose and fell all around. In the far distance we could just glimpse the plain, six thousand feet below. Beyond the plains stood the Anamali range of hills. Often, on waking in the early morning, we would rush outside in our pyjamas just to witness the glorious sight of the sun rising over on our left. Below us would be a vast expanse of billowing white clouds, punctured by one or two dark blue mountain peaks.

We watched in silence while the sky gradually changed from pale grey to blue and the clouds from white to a pearly grey, then to cream, until finally, the fiery orange-red ball of sun appeared, huge and glowing above the cloud mass. As the heat from the sun warmed the air, the clouds slowly began to rise. First we could see the bright sky above the clouds, then as the clouds levelled within our line of vision the sun was obliterated and below we had a clear view of the plains – truly breathtaking and never to be forgotten!’

This is a familiar experience for the book club members, who often wake up above the clouds … or in the clouds, and once the sun breaks through are struck again by the beauty of their landscape.

Staff and students from Providence College, Coonoor.

It was wonderful to share with them experiences of life in India and in particular the Nilgiris.

The Nilgiri Library, photo from a Nilgiri Library Facebook entry

The Nilgiri Library is 161 years old.

Library interior, photo by Nikhil Paingy

Kamala Ramchand describes it in nilgirishistory.weebly.com as ‘housing more than 40,000 books, holding more treasures than all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island, where one can spend two lifetimes …’

The Reading Room

Fredrick Price in his book Ootacamund: A History writes that ‘Mr. Sullivan, founder of the Nilgiris, breathed life into the concept of a library in 1829: A subscription has been set on foot for a public reading room at Ooty.’

1829 was also the year when the foundation stone for St Stephen’s Church, Ooty, was laid. It seems incredible that a wild mountainous region, only sparsely inhabited by indigenous tribal peoples became a town big enough to warrant a large church and a library in ten short years.

The Nilgiris rise up from the plain.

Although the East India company took possession of the Nilgiris after the defeat of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the mountains had not been visited by any Englishman until 1818, when two sportsmen on shikari (big game hunting) accidentally discovered ‘the coolness of the ambience in the Nilgiris.’

In 1819, John Sullivan, District Collector, Madras, noted above as ‘founder of the Nilgiris’, built the first house in Ootacamund. With great speed the East India Company established the town as a sanatorium for Europeans away from the stifling heat of the plains.

Up to this time, sick and ailing Company employees and their relatives had been sent by ship all the way to the Cape, Africa. Missionaries had no recourse unless their missions brought them home. It must have been exciting to discover a much more accessible place in the hills with a climate similar to an English summer.

For more on the authors and books mentioned in this post try these links:

An Elephant Kissed My Window

by M Ravindran and Saaz Aggarwal

ISBN: 9789383465149

Recently I came upon this book and was instantly transported back to the tea plantations of South India which I was lucky enough to visit in the 1950s and 60s when my father was a visiting doctor to some of the Nilgiris tea estates and when many planters were patients at the hospital in Mysore where he worked.

If you’ve met an elephant at close quarters, you will recognise the extraordinary gentleness described by M Ravindran in his story about a nocturnal visitor …

‘There in the hazy porch light, stood a massive elephant right at our doorstep, blowing kisses on the glass pane.’

Many of the stories are about encounters with wild animals; not surprising considering the isolation of plantation bungalows, surrounded by hundreds of acres of tea bushes and dense highland jungle.

There are other tales about hauntings, fire-walking, snake catching, lightning strike, and quite a few anecdotes that will have you smiling at the eccentricities of Estate staff and servants, and neighbouring planters.

Saaz Aggarwal started working on the book in 2013, interviewing, among others, M Ravindran. Six years later Ravindran told her that he had written a collection of stories … and so the book came about.

Saaz has interwoven M Ravindran’s tales with stories from other planters; Carolyn Hollis, Denis Mayne, Ravindran’s son and daughter, plus some recollections from Saaz herself and interesting extracts and advertisements from old publications such as the ‘Madras District Gazetteer’ and the ‘Planting Directory of South India’. Along with more than a hundred photos and Saaz’s line drawings, this has created a fascinating insight to the lives of planters from the start of tea planting in the Nilgiris in the early 1800s until today.

In Saaz’s words; ‘This book took me back to an idyllic childhood, its pristine air-quality, vistas of sloping valleys of smooth green from sitting room windows, brilliant night skies and a certain formal grandeur and privileged way of living compounding the fundamental isolation of plantation life.’

The paperback book is published in India, but you can buy it on Amazon –