Tag Archives: St. Swithins

Delia Whitehead: Harvest Festival at St. Swithin’s Thorley

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Thorley St Swithin’s Church

When I was young I lived at the Toll Gate just outside of Yarmouth. My Aunt Alice always took me to St Swithin’s Harvest Festival (now called Harvest Thanksgiving).

On one occasion we were singing a lovely harvest hymn, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement. I looked towards a pile of vegetables and on the top was a marrow. On top of the marrow was a mouse chewing away quite happily and it did so for a long time.

It was only a few years ago I was telling a lady from Thorley about this and she said that the Thorley mice still come to the Harvest Service and their teeth marks were often found on the vegetables and fruit.
Delia Whitehead nee Hunt b 1934

Delia Whitehead : Picking snowdrops at Thorley old church

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The Old Thorley Church in a Field

The old church at Thorley had a church yard full of snowdrops in the spring. In fact there were so many no one seemed to mind if you picked a few. As children we would visit it in the spring and pick just a few snowdrops to take home to our folks.

One day I went with a friend to get some flowers. We had just left the church yard to walk across the field to the road when we heard this sort of snorting noise and there behind us a large ram was heading in our direction very fast. Did we run! We fell over the stile to get into the road. The flowers went all over the place. I might add we never went back to get them.

During the winter, the farmer, Mr Mullet used to let some sheep into the old church yard to keep the grass down. It rather put us off going for flowers again in case we met this hostile ram but we often laughed about it afterwards.
Delia Whitehead nee Hunt b 1934