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Miss Parker in 1975
| We were very much involved with Miss Parker during our time at Dunkeswell Abbey, taking her 3 troublesome dogs for longs walks every day, feeding her hens (and getting most of the eggs) and having the use of a large part of her garden to augment our own vegetable patch. She had lived with her brother in the cottage for decades. He had been a high-ranking army officer and Miss Parker was definitely used to seeing the world in terms of a mistress-servant relationship. Despite that, she accepted us much more readily than the local farmers appeared to. There was no electricity in her cottage, which had been built up from the ruins of the Abbey gatehouse. The small living-room window was covered with dense creeper (it still is), so Angela had to take this shot of Miss Parker and Dennis the Menace by the small amount of sunlight that managed to squeeze through. Miss Parker died about a year after this picture was taken, shortly before we left Dunkeswell Abbey. She was about 95. |
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