Jack Hargreaves - A Town and Country Life

A Town and Country Life

Born, like his brothers, in north London, Hargreaves, in his youth, was placed by his mother with old family friends at Burston Hill Farm north of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire where he was profoundly influenced by the farmer Victor Pargeter. Over half a century later, Hargreaves would acknowledge Pargeter as part of a composite of father, grandfathers, uncles and old farming friends in the formative character of 'The Old Man' at the start of his book Out of Town (1987). Hargreaves was to live at a variety of addresses in central London between Soho, Chelsea and Hampstead. In the late 40s he was moving between a London home and a caravan in a field on the bank of the River Kennet at Midgham, then a cottage in Bagnor in Berkshire by the Winterbourne running into the River Lambourn, then at Lower Pennington and Walhampton near Lymington as well as at Minstead and East Boldre in The New Forest, and, he spent his final years at Raven Cottage, near Belchalwell in Dorset which he - an inveterate commuter to and from the places from where he worked - was wont to bless for being 'just out of range of London'. He died at the Winterbourne Hospital in Dorchester, and was cremated at Salisbury, his ashes spread on Bulbarrow Hill above Raven Cottage.