Pembroke and Somerville
The life of the Boyzz 1988 - today
Click on small/middle sized photos below to enlarge
Somerville College Bear arrived in our lives around 1988, when we were running Chadlington Manor Hotel, just 17 miles from Oxford. There he was, on a stall in Oxford Market, crying out for new parents, - so we took him in.
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Oxford Market . . . . . . . . . . . .Somerville College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . Chadlington Manor
Not many months later, we were having a short break in Wales, where David espied Pembroke Castle Bear in the gift shop of Pembroke Castle. This little fellow cried out strongly to David, but I was more resistant: "What do we want with a second Ted?". But, appealing eyes won the day, and Pembroke Castle Ted came home with us, and was soon joined by the the Chadlington Manor bears, but these lived just in the hotel!.
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Since that day, bears have just continued to arrive on our doorstep. We introduced Chadlington Manor Bears to our home after a passenger on a bus near Chadlington thought they had seen a bear in the fields: well why not sell bears to our customers, a profitable, though very small, sideline to selling hotel rooms!
Demonstration of how bears just kept landing on the doorstep - roll call February 2014, just a few absent!
In their youth, the boyzz used to come on holiday with us, but never left our bedrooms, and very few, if any, photos were taken of their travels. Occasionally they would show their faces to the crews on airplanes.
In 1996, we sold Chadlington and decamped to Corisande Manor Hotel, Newquay. Of course the lads came with us, plus the large Chadlington Manor Ted, plus Big Ted who had been bought to welcome our son's birth in Lausanne on 11/11/1973 , plus Sooty who had been given to us after Joanna's birth in 1974 and at that time was larger than she was!. Plus Sleepy , who had been bought in a Travel Lodge in the States around 1978 by Stephen, but had been cast out by him by around 1989. Plus, Paddington, presented to David before a bemused audience, as a leaving present from Johnson Wax in 1973 . Plus, no doubt, numerous others.
Once based in Cornwall, the boyzz continued to enjoy their annual hols - usually taken in January. Once I left them behind- not realising until we were several miles from home on the National Express bus whizzing to Heathrow - they were not amused three weeks later!. Meanwhile the word had got around that Corisande was a good home for bears- and they just came flooding in: large Corisande Manor, Cornwall Ted, Sebastien - a real Stieff bear- , Daddy Bear, Big RSPCA Ted, Facetious, Obsequious, Jeremy, several Paddingtons . . .plus a few cousins, like Dottie & Dougal, Curiosity
But it was really only once we had retired, 2007, and began to travel seriously, that the boyzz' horizons really widened. And, on a group holiday in 2012, they discovered that they had more fans than just us- though some in the group just thought them and us odd!!. And each holiday more bears joined us: the Roos from Australia, Mountie from Canada, Gerbaud from Hungary, Panda from China, cousin Pinguino from Punta Tumba ...Plus those who arrived with visiting friends: twin Koalas from Carol & Russell, Sheffield Ted from Sally, New Southgate Ted from Margaret, and as presents from Joanna and Beth, & some as presents for genealogical services rendered, like Gosling Ted, Buckthorpe Bear, along with cousin, Alexander Hepburn.
Click to read their lives for the following years:-
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| Life in 2004-2006 | |||||
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