Mrs Lonsdale from Poundon House enquired of the Miss Haynes, head mistress of Twyford School, if she could recommend a good clean girl who could help in the kitchens at their house. This resulted in Mrs Lonsdale asking Harry and Vida Culley if they would allow their Daughter Beryl (Bet) who had left school, to work for them. In 1936 or 37, Beryl went to work at Poundon House.

Whilst there, Beryl could vividly remember the Lonsdale family going to Scotland for the Deer Stalking and shooting season and staying at Glen Clunie Lodge (now only a heap of rubble) just short of Breamar. The journey took them up the A93 road and where this climbs up out of Glen Shee, there is a steep incline and there are some very sharp hairpin bends called the Devils Elbow. Beryl could remember the chauffeur trying to negotiate these and she became so frightened that she jumped out of the car.

Whilst at Glen Clunie she could remember seeing the Deer Stalkers on the mountains and also having to dress lots of Grouse for the table, on one occasion getting in trouble for refusing to dress one that the maggots had started to eat into.

Beryl and Tom Wingfield in 1944

During the second World War, the matron from a nurses’ accommodation in Oxford needed cooks to work in their kitchens so Mrs Lonsdale sent Beryl to work there. The nurses cared for injured soldiers who were billeted in the Parks, many from the Royal Corp of Signals, and during this time the Matron would invite some of the recovering soldiers to afternoon tea with the nurses. Tom Wingfield was one of these and on meeting Beryl their relationship started, and before the end of the war, they married at St Giles’s Church Oxford on the 29th of April 1944 having sought a special licence for their marriage which was necessary during the war.

Once fully recovered Tom Wingfield continued his military service as a despatch rider, regularly making journeys between Abergavenny in South Wales and Bletchley Park, often calling in at 17 (now 23) Portway Road Twyford to see his wife.

On the day that he was demobbed, 5th November 1946, his first daughter was born, and having to make his own way back home, the family were unable to contact him to let him know the birth was imminent, only on his arrival home did he find he had a daughter Linda, now Linda Hodges.

Tom and Beryl Wingfield lived in Portway Road for the rest of their lives.