After London

After almost 10 years in London and virtually all the time working for the theatre in london I and my first wife decided to leave our rat race and try to join friends who we had met whilst at College in Exeter , John and Jenny Arthur who had moved to Hexham, Northumberland, in order to take on a farm that John's father had bought. John's family had been the oldest tenant farmers for the Duke of Northumberland, I beleive from the 1500's and the family farm on the edge of Newcastle upon Tyne had gradually been sold off to make way for the expanding city of Newcastle. This gave John's father some cash to buy up other farms on the outer perimiter of Newcastle.
Jaqueline Catherine Simkins was born in Dublin, Ireland, which did give us problems with the police during times of terrorism, on the 26 October 1949, family name of Adams, I beleive her mother came from Wicklow and her father from Cork and that her mothers family were builders in Dublin and later with the Guiness company. Her father was a naval officer, supplies, before moving to Exeter around about 1962, having a job with the Royal Navy in Greenwich, London.
The photos abve show John and Nathan Arthur on top of the Gin Gang just before he decided to demolish it, history lost and not many photos taken. The other photos are of my attempt to keep a marriage alive with the undertaking of a barn conversion. On a cold day John(designer friend) with myself, have a break from installing a water pipe from the spring several fields away. One fine day friends arrive to help for a couple of hours and have a picnic, John and Nathan Arthur with my solicitor/friend John Halliday, sitting at the grill are Jenny's mother Pam and Jenny Arthur with Maria Halliday and Jacky's work colleague Liz. Then there are two photos of myself taken by Jacky and show the real truth of a one man project that was to take the best of 6 years and end in divorce.