Winifred Foley

The author recounts her childhood, living in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, where her father was a coal miner. At fourteen she had to leave her beloved forest for the city, bound for a life in service among London's grey terraces, where she met her future husband.

This is an account of Winifred Foley's childhood, domestic service, her early married life with Syd, and her final return to her beloved Forest of Dean.

After her years in domestic service, Winifred Foley married and started a family, but she continued to long for her home in the Forest of Dean. Determined to give their children the rural upbringing she had enjoyed, the couple moved to an isolated cottage not far from the Forest. Even in the 1950s it was a primitive life of hard work on the land, struggling to make ends meet, and finding strength in the embrace of a loving family.