Brian & Carol Thorne (& Stanley)

by Mary Bevan

Brian was born in Bere Regis in 1942. Although he was a war baby he doesn’t remember too much about the war except that his father was in the Home Guard.

In his early years the family moved around as his father worked on different Shaftesbury Estate farms and Brian was educated at the village schools. In 1952 they came to Wimborne St Giles and Brian went to school there for five years and was happy there. Being born into a farming community, when it was time for him to begin working at age 15 he followed his father in working on the land and spent the next 50 years employed on Shaftesbury Estate farms. From the first he particularly enjoyed driving tractors, an interest that has remained with him all his life. In the early years, the tractors were small of course – David Browne 40-50 horsepower – but gradually they became bigger and by the time he retired at 65 years of age he was driving 300 horsepower fully computerised machines.

Brian first met Carol when she was 20. She had been brought up in Hemel Hempstead and had worked there in a stationers, John Dickinson, selling items such as Basildon Bond writing paper and Parker pens items that are very much part of our British heritage.

It was Brian’s dad who actually brought Carol and Brian together. He was living at Monkton in Dorset at the time and it so happened that Carol went there frequently to visit her cousins and would often see him out in his garden and chat with him. On one of these visits she met Brian for the first time, and after that her walks with her cousin grew longer and longer to make sure they ‘happened upon’ Brian. To make sure they could meet frequently Carol would call in sick to her employer in Hemel Hempstead from time to time and get the day off to travel down to Dorset on the Royal Blue coach. As you can guess, these meetings led eventually to the development of a close relationship, and on her twenty-third birthday in 1971 Carol married Brian in Wimborne Saint Giles church and held their wedding reception in the village hall – which is where they have celebrated all their major wedding anniversaries ever since.

Brian tells a lovely story from the early days of their marriage of how one day a lorry driver coming to the Shaftesbury Estates stopped for a word with him and said, ‘I’ve just seen a really nice piece of stuff in a mini-skirt back down the road.’ Brian immediately realised that the ‘piece of stuff’ was Carol who had a job in Blandford at the time and, not yet being able to drive, used to walk up to the main road every day to pick up the bus. ‘That’s no piece of stuff, that’s my wife,’ he told the lorry driver. 

Carol and Brian have always played a full part in the life of their village and in its seasonal events such as the Harvest Suppers at St Giles House laid on for his workers by Lord Shaftesbury. Their first child, Stephen, was born in 1973, followed by Nicola in 1976. Many years later, Nicola married and went to live in Australia, and this gave Brian and Carol the opportunity to go on many exciting trips to visit her there. 

Brian finally retired in 2007 and was presented with a garden swing-seat which they used for many years. But Brian couldn’t be idle and even after he’d formally retired he went on working, helping his son Stephen who by now owned his own mowing business. Then, on December 16 of 2019 Brian and Carol made their last move to date into the house where they now live, having watched it being built brick by brick. 

Libby – Carol and Brian’s granddaughter, calls her Gran ‘Nanny Knit’ because she’s a constant and very skilled knitter and sells her knitting and crochet at various events in aid of village funds, and fortunately for us, at Christmas time brings carriers full along to Jolly Good Company for us to buy as presents. She is also skilled at needlework and embroidery. One of the prized possessions she brought along for us to see was the beautiful Christening gown she made for her daughter some 46 years ago out of her own wedding dress. Another was the sampler she embroidered in 2000 in cross-stitch to celebrate the millennium. 

Finally, no account of Brian and Carol’s life would be complete without a mention of ‘Stan the Man’, a much-loved dog and life-companion who’s getting on a bit but always comes to our Jolly days and puts up with us – sometimes joining in, always being petted and made a fuss of by everyone.

It’s our habit in these life story events to ask our subjects to share their philosophy of life with us. When I asked Brian about this it turned out that his philosophy of life was simple – ‘the wife’s always right’. Very sensible, and no doubt one of the reasons for his long and happy marriage to Carol! We wish them many, many more years together.