Lavinia Greenwood remembers childhood holidays
at the Dutch Barn

The 8 Malim children with their boat at Southwold Blackshore in about 1932. 12 year-old Lavinia, the youngest, is seated at the prow. (See close-up below)

"The Dutch Barn was bought  by my father, Frederick Blagden Malim, probably early in the  First World War and owned by him until it was taken by the government in 1940 or 1941. My father was headmaster of Haileybury College and later Head of Wellington College. I was born in 1920 so knew it as our annual summer home from an early age.  It held a family of parents and eight children and a nanny and often an extra cousin or two.

Inside  the gate was  a small lawn with a badminton  net.  Behind the house and garden was a large grass area where horses were grazed and which we rode bare-backed up to an owner who rented them out for hire during the day.*

In what is now a parking lot was an ugly  building in which they manufactured sails and things for fishermen and their boats. We swam from the house, going up steps to the beach in our bathing suits .

At the end of Ferry Road we reached the River (Blyth) and could rent a boat. We had our own dinghy and kept it there in a boat house. It was rowed and sailed up the river or out to  sea.  I have used my sailing skills learned on the River Blyth here in Canada in Cowichan Bay!"

* Probably Ursula Read's Field Stile Riding School in Ferry Road, which also rented out hunters, hacks and ponies. See entry for 'Former Riding School', Ferry Road.