Book description
After her years in domestic service, Winifred Foley married and started
a family. But, while scraping a living as a charwoman in a rundown north
London tenement, she continued to long for her home in the Forest of
Dean and the cherished relatives she had left behind. Determined to give
their children the rural upbringing she had enjoyed, the young couple
moved to an isolated, crumbling cottage not far from the Forest. But
even in the 1950s they lacked heating or running water, and money was
tight. Food was begged, borrowed or home-grown, and their clothes were
hand-me-downs. 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. Born in 1914, Winifred Foley grew up in the Forest of
Dean. She died in March 2009.
