Tom's Field a Change

 To carry on the story of Tom's Field in 1993 there was a change in ownership ! It was a daunting prospect to take on this well loved place; to retain the character, charm, and the customers who had loved it because of the way Tom had run it.

Part of the delight of the site for regulars lay in the neglect and quaint, old-fashioned air – even down to the sight of a seemingly medieval Acme wringer, we still have kept wringer mark 2 much to the delight of many children who have put inummerable stretchy plastic men through it.

We set about our task of taking over as sensitively as possible, aware that there could be much resentment to fundamental changes that might damage the very reasons why they loved it so much.

The schools and scouts area in the 1950s

We knew that Tom was well loved by many people because of his unique personality. We also knew that he had found it increasingly hard to manage on his own, which he had done for the previous few years. After his father died he didn’t have any help as far as we know. Sometimes he would escape for a break at lunchtime and, in his eagerness, one day locked an unsuspecting camper in the shop! At one point, some women campers, realising how difficult it was for Tom to manage, armed themselves with bucket and mop to help out in the toilet block on a voluntary basis. 

Tom collecting campers rubbish

We have always attemped to preserve the qualities of basic tenting camping without becoming a caravan park.

Well, we have opened now for the 2016 season and will continue with the history of this amazing place with which we had loved since  1970s when we came on holiday with our own family. 

This drawing was done by a visitor about 15 years ago. 

In 1965 a small timber building was extended for use as a campsite shop. This was behind where the present shop stands. Planning permission was obtained in 1974 to build a new shop, where the present shop is sited.

In 1968 a toilet block was built next to the Nissen hut and about five years later this was extended. Tom and his father, Titus, used to sell milk from Talbot Cottage, still to be seen in Langton High Street, just past the end of Tom’s Field Road. That building was their home before Drywalling was built alongside the entrance to Tom’s Field. Drywalling was knocked down in 2006 and replaced by two smart stone homes, one of which retains the name Drywalling.

Tom and his dad outside the shop.

There was a dairy where the shop terrace is now and there were at least two quarries on the site. A Spitfire crashed on the field behind Tom’s Field during the Second World War and there are stories that many cows were buried somewhere on the fields after being slaughtered in an early outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Fortunately, none of these has ever surfaced. Perhaps it is an apocryphal tale!

Tom never drove a car and used go to trade shows on his Vespa scooter. This seemed to break down constantly and sometimes Graham Windsor, of Caramarine, would put him and the vehicle into his van to bring him home. Perhaps surprisingly, Tom never went camping and had a fairly cynical view of campers,  “Campers don’t read (notices),” he would say. Yet, he made many friends and would visit his long-standing visitors when they returned to the site year after year. They will never forget Tom. So established was his method of operating the site and he did his best to pass on to us some of his routines. For example, Tom used to make up packs of tent pegs through the winter and often told us that we should occupy ourselves gainfully in the same way. I think he nurtured a deep disappointment that we did not do that.

Tom, who was born in 1931, died in the summer of 2005. He is buried in the cemetery down Crack Lane, in Langton Matravers. Tom never married but had many cousins.

Some More History

The picture was given us by Tom.

Tom’s Field is a little more than 4.5 acres and was used for stone quarrying, having heads for three underground workings. When underground working became less attractive the land became used as a smallholding for cattle, chicken and pigs.

The whole of Tom’s Field Road once belonged to the Bower family but was gradually sold off as building plots. Tom’s Field was first used for casual camping in the late 1950s, when part of the land was a smallholding.

Tom and his father developed the site and had some interesting and innovative ideas. There was Tom’s venture into pre-erected tents. This was in the mid-1970s when the concept of tent camping as an inexpensive family holiday faced increasing competition from caravans, both static and touring. Cheap package holidays in Spain were enjoying a massive boom with the advent of Laker Airways and other such all- inclusive operators. In France there were large sites that operated tents for camping holidays with the holidaymakers travelling over to the Continent by coach. It was in this environment that Tom thought that if others could do this sort of thing, why should it not be possible at Tom’s Field?

He obtained a few suitable frame tents, four to six person size. To make them comfortable, he laid down wooden sections made of demolition floorboards and sheets of ply. These were then covered with groundsheets that were tacked down. The tents were duly erected. At this time, a company called Caramarine, based in Dorchester, supplied equipment to fit out holiday caravans and Tom with camping goods. Tom asked Graham Windsor, the then owner of Caramarine, to provide interior furnishings for the tents. Each one was equipped with a camping kitchen, table, two burners and grill cooker, gas bottle, cutlery, plastic plates, bowls and mugs, pots and frying pan, bucket, bowl and cooking utensils. Tom was then ready to commence operations as a “rent-a-tent” operator. He did not spend much on advertising this venture; indeed, he always advised us to use only the free entries in camping literature, but to start with he met with some modest degree of success. However, it soon became apparent to Tom that the operation required a lot more attention than he could manage in the busy season and to cap it all he was losing quite a lot of equipment from the tents when they were not occupied.

Other campers would enter these tents under the cover of darkness and remove valuable items such as cookers, beds and other bits and pieces, to the extent that Tom decided to call it a day and sold off most, if not all, of the equipment.

There remains an example of one of the items used in the pre-erected tents. Tom ordered some orange plastic chairs that came ready to be assembled – an early type of flat-pack. A few of these survived for many years. Tom used to sit on one outside the shop, passing the time of day for varying periods. If in a particularly communicative mood, Tom could hold a passer-by’s attention for quite a while. We still have – and use – one of these orange chairs.