English: Betty Mundy's Cottages. Looking NW from Wayfarer's Walk which skirts this splendidly isolated property. Preshaw Estate's gamekeeper tells me there was only ever one cottage here and it has been demolished and rebuilt several times. It's more of a mansion now, with artificial lakes and a powerful fountain. I was tempted to step through these trees to get a clear view but felt it would violate their privacy.

In 2009, Sheila Beauvais (née Brosnan) emailed me from Montreal, Canada, to say that there were two cottages joined together and that she lived in one of them with her mother and four other children from 1949 until 1971 and the other one was rented by a couple who worked for Major Pelley who owned the big house in Preshaw Estate. She gave permission for me to quote the following "There were 3 boys and 2 girls, and my mother (very hard working). We lived there all our young lives even when I started working I lived there for a while, then I had to move away for easier access to work.

Walked the road million times to Bishops Waltham we had to go to church on Sundays there.

My 2 older brothers were not born there, my mother had them before she arrived there so myself and my sister and my young brother were born there.

We all went to school at Droxford, when we were small. There was a car that used to pick us up at that time it used to be called Sinclairs Farm which is down aways from Betty Mundys.

Then there was 4 of us attended Swanmore school; the oldest went to Waterlooville because Swanmore had not been built then.

We used to walk down to Meonstoke to take the bus to go to Swanmore, everyday and walk home at night, never late and rarely took a day off school, the principal (Mr Gimblett) was very proud of us that as far as we come for school we made it.

It was not easy growing up there because when I was young for many years we did not have no running water no electricity, and no toilet inside.

I think the waterfall that is there now was the well that we used to draw our water from to take our bath and to drink (fantastic taste) the water.

To wash our clothes we used to have to fill a big sink and my mother had a big copper barrel in the corner of the kitchen we put wood under to boil the water.

My mother used to have a blackstove cast iron to cook on and each bedroom had a fireplace we used to have tilley lamps and a primus stove also. No TV, no computers, no fancy games, no fridge, no luxuries.

There were 3 bedrooms upstairs and 3 rooms downstairs, it was the same layout in the 2 houses.

The couple living in the house next to us, they had moved up to the Preshaw Estate before they passed on because the lady she took care of the gardens there and her husband worked on the farm their name was Shep and Renee Bone, they did not have any small children.

They lived there all the years I lived there.

I believe my mother moved to Bishops Waltham in 1971 or 72 cannot be exact.

When I went back with my husband recently to see the old place I was shocked to see what they had done to it, but I would liked to have spoken to the lady in the house or the people that own it but I was a little shy to invade their privacy, but I said to my husband maybe they would like to have met the people that grew up there before it was all changed, now I will have to wait for another time we were only home for a week not really long to explore all the old lane ways and the long walks we took.

I cannot believe we were able to survive there that long, but they were the good old days which sometimes I would like to have back, hard work never killed anyone.

Up In the big mansion they called Preshaw Estate there was a Maj John Pelley he is the one my mum rented the house from.

Lower Preshaw there used to be a family called Moldens I am not sure if I have the right pronunciation, my mum used to work on the farm for them picking potatoes we used to help every summer when on holiday from school."