Honingham Thorpe House

Just two miles from the Barnham Broom Golf Club is my father's home as a teenager and young man. His father farmed here. A good life that he seldom talked about, I think because it so deeply hurt him when his father died of ill health in the mid 1930's.

My father loved the farming and country life and would certainly have gladly taken over the farm but the economic situation in the 1930's worldwide and in particular in UK farming had forced his father to insist he learn another profession. And indeed when he died, his mother sold up the farm for a pittance to an insurance company who were circling like vultures to pick up cheap property.

I have a few photos of the house back then showing the tennis court and the house as well as his two beloved terriers - possibly as he had four elder sisters, he spent as much time as he could with the local gamekeeper and this was probably the most he ever told me. And I do remember just vaguely, probably around 1960 on a holiday in the Uk visiting him and walking around the pheasant hatchery.

About two years ago I took up contact with the present owner and had an interesting exchange of emails and photos. It is now the base for a huge farm contracting business.

When he read my grandmothers full name, he suddenly realised the significance of some initials scratched on a glass window pane in his bedroom. He has spent his whole life there so suspect last 60+ years and while he has done lots of improvements to the house and put in lots of new windows, he still hadn't done this one.

My grandmother's name was Isabel Mary Matilda Shales Berkeley Gowing although I think the Shales and Berkeley were pre-marriage family names. She had a bit of a tic about names and her connections to the Berkeley family of "Berkeley Castle" fame.

The family joke was that she even slipped a genealogist an extra £10 to manipulate her family tree to get us connected to William the Conqueror in 1066 and thus the Lords & Dukes of Berkeley. All four daughters and my father had the middle name Berkeley forced on them. My father broke this when I was born but I brought it back with my first own dog who was entered in the Border Terrier register with "Berkeley James Harvest".

I got to like the name Berkeley (Berks or Barks), so naturally thought it was the logical path when a male heir was born.on 2nd February 1984 and entered by the Registrar at Chichester Hospital, and repeated at his christening on 13th May 1984, as Jonathan James Berkeley Gowing.

I don't think he has ever forgiven me for naming him after a dog, as much as he was to get to like Berks!