At the end of this month Douglas and Vera Daymond leave Victoria Dairy Farm in Payhembury for Honiton to be nearer their two daughters.
Their departure will end a link between the Daymond family and the village that began in 1894, when Douglas’s great-grandfather bought the farm (then called ‘The Ridge’), and began running the Six Bells pub. He also built the cottages on the top side of the village triangle.
Douglas was born in the Six Bells in 1935, and met Vera Tucker – from Plymtree -at the Young Farmers Spring Ball in Cullompton in 1952. They married four years later, and their letter from the Queen congratulating them on their diamond anniversary is one of their most treasured possessions.
Douglas’s lifelong interest has been cows. His family kept the first British Friesians in the parish, and at the age of eight Douglas taught himself how to hand-milk. ‘Not so clever,’ he says ruefully, ‘because from then on I had to milk before and after school.’ Back then the family used to deliver their milk all round the village, measuring it out from a bucket into people’s jugs and pots.
Douglas went on to breed and show Friesian Holsteins, and has won numerous prizes, most spectacularly Best Reserve Champion Heifer at the Royal Show in 1994 with Payhembury Renate. Renate, a proud, beautiful animal, always held her head up high when a halter was slipped on in case she was about to go in the ring, and gave up to 13 gallons a day. When the Daymonds had their dispersal sale in 2003, forty of her progeny were sold. Douglas’s cows have led to him travelling to Spain, France, Portugal and even Canada, and becoming a respected judge.
‘I always knew,’ Vera jokes, ‘that I came third in his life: the cows were first, and then his dog.’ Older villagers may remember Douglas’s marvellous collie bitch, Andy, who was with him for nearly 20 years, and used to help him drive cows through the village to pasture at the Old Vicarage, or down to Egremont Cross. ‘She’d sit next to him when he had a cup of tea,’ Vera says, ‘and eat the biscuit.’ Vera has always been by Douglas’s side, helping him with the calves, as well as running a thriving bed and breakfast business and raising their four children: Wendy, Anthony, Jacqueline and Roger. They now have six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
It’s hard to imagine Payhembury without Douglas: in his time he has run the Hall Committee, the Playing Field Committee, served as a School Governor, and of course he was on the Parish Council for 43 years, Chairman for 38. He also served on East Devon District Council as the Representative for the Tale Vale Ward. He was on the May Fair Committee, too, when Payhembury had a huge yearly May Fair in William’s Ash field. He has a fund of stories about the old days, remembering how full the pub used to be with Americans from Dunkeswell when the war was on, and the great moment when the old village pond (next to Culver House) was set on fire on VE night.
Douglas and Vera are sad to go, but Victoria Dairy Farm, with all its stairs, is increasingly hard to negotiate. ‘I’ll miss the roads round Payhembury most,’ Douglas says wistfully. Since his stroke he’s been driving down them on his mobility scooter, charmed and delighted by how many friends and neighbours stop to chat to him. Both he and Vera will be very much missed.
Lucy Pinney
