Swinbrook is indeed a lovely village, with a small bubbling stream running through it which eventually flows into the Windrush further down the street - which is lined with delightful Cotsowold stone cottages and houses, and beautifully tended gardens with springs tumbling out of the rolling hillsides and surrounded by green fields and wooded valleys - all typical of the Cotswolds...On the afternoon I was there, the winter sun shone on them, making the tiny flowers glow rich and red. It was here that for some time after the First World War, Lord Redesdale and his wife and family lived in the beautiful manor house, after moving from nearby Asthall Manor. His daughters were famous Mitford girls. I remember one day, years ago, before the last war, when I was shopping in nearby town of Witney: suddenly a huge car with the hood down drew up just opposite where I was standing. Out of it tripped four or five of the most gorgeous, attractive, beautifully dressed girls that I ever saw - either before or since. They were the Mitford girls. I just stood there open-mouthed at these happy, laughing young ladies, as they wandered into what was then the nicest dress shop in the town.
Taken from Mollie Harris's Where The Windrush Flows (1989), Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, Gloucester, pp. 67-68.
picture credits: The Mitford Sisters in 1935 (telegraph.co.uk)
Mollie Harris's Where the Windrush Flows (amazon.co.uk)
They were indeed beautiful!
ReplyDeleteBest to you, ASD.
Thanks my dear. A new book by the Duchess of Devonshire is out if you are interested in the Mitford girls, btw.
ReplyDeleteI keep meaning to get the letters written by the Mitford gals to each other.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry to be so behind with your (and everyone else's) blog. The days just slip by and I am too tired to sit down and concentrate. You do know that nothing is meant by this - I hope normality will resume soon.
In the meantime xxx