“The Gypsy Camp” by Raymond Wills

DHC houses the Local Studies Library,  a reference library which houses publications about Dorset’s past, and we are always keeping an eye out for new books to add diversity and depth to the collection.

This summer we have added “The Gypsy Camp” by Raymond Wills, the local ‘Gypsy Poet’. Ray is an author and poet from a rich Traveller heritage and an active member of Kushti Bok which acts as a forum on behalf of the Gypsy / Traveller community in Dorset. Ray regularly gives talks on Gypsy history and related issues to community groups. His previous publications have included “Gypsy Storyteller”, “Where the River Bends” and “The Canford Chronicles” poetry collection – all of which are also available in the Local Studies Library. He also has had numerous articles on Gypsy life published by Traveller Times. We asked Ray to tell us about his latest work:

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The book is about Gypsy Traveller encampments in the UK and includes fresh research about camps in Dorset and their links with potteries and quarries. It’s about entertainers, boxers, storytellers, brick makers, potters, masons, quarrymen and preachers and men who served this nation with distinction.

I include material from the 1500s to the present era – stories which helped to shape the fabric of our present society. “The Gypsy Camp” also contains verse by myself and others and follows on from “Where the River Bends”, an in-depth look into the history of the Gypsies. I was keen to enlarge on Travellers’ lives having had a fascination with Gypsy encampments as a child.

Our closest neighbours were the Gypsies who camped nearby on Mannings Heath. This is a huge stretch of common land and had many encampments courtesy of the landowners, Lord and Lady Wimborne. I still have wonderful memories of the heathlands of Canford – spending days out with my uncles, meeting relatives of Caroline Hughes – the Gypsy Queen songsmith.

My ancestors on my mother’s side – Rogers and Fancys – were Gypsy travelling folk, mainly brick makers and Quarrymen. My great maternal grandmother, Emily Fancy, was born in a Gypsy campsite at Bourne Bottom, Dorset in 1850. Her father, Gideon, was born on the Mannings Road, Poole which eventually became the Poole Council Gypsy site. My paternal grandfather, Jim Hansford, lived in a hut on the common lands of Turlin Moor before moving to Newtown where he gained a reputation as the strongest man in Parkstone! Many of my father’s ancestors were Stone Masons and Quarrymen at Portland.

“Gypsy Camp” brings together Gypsy stories and addresses their adjustment to living alongside non-Gypsies within the new housing estates which were created after the war years. These included the Newtown community in Parkstone/Branksome and Stoney Down at Corfe Mullen. Some of the stories are personal accounts shared with me, whilst others I discovered through research. I also include a section on non-Gypsies – artists, writers, philanthropists or radical liberal landowners who often lived with them in their encampments or campaigned alongside them on their behalf.

Most people are aware of Gypsy trades and work such as labouring, fruit picking, horse trading, basket and furniture making and working with iron. However, this book chronicles their involvement with pottery, brickyards and stone quarries.

Before the conurbations of Bournemouth and Poole there were nearly 2,500 kiln sites in S.E. Dorset, and many of these later became brickyards or quarries. I found that landowners and church leaders invested their wealth in the creation of brickyards and potteries which were needed for their fine estates and house building for the growing population. Brickyard workers worked long hours in family units and in gangs – the work was hot and hard, and the labourers lived in nearby encampments. Inns were created which provided further income for the wealthy owners and as wages were often paid out at the inn, the workers formed something of a captive clientele.

It was George Hall who wrote the following many years ago which perhaps best sums up why I chose to work on this book and echoes my own thoughts:

“Not a few writers have essayed to study the Gypsies in dusty libraries. I have camped with them on fell and commons, race courses and fairgrounds, on the tufty wastelands and in the cities heart – I have tried to present the Gypsies as I have found them without minimising their faults or magnifying their virtues”.

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