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TOM TROAKE
Born: Uffculme, Devon, 1920
Lived: Dulverton and Brushford
Recording made: 2000 and 2001
Length of recording:
3 hrs 5 mins
To read a summary of the contents of the oral history recordings click CD 1, CD 2 or CD3.
Listen to an audio clip by clicking wma or mp3. (Click here for information about downloading audio clips)
Tom Troake spent his early years in a vicarage near Cullompton, where his parents worked for the curate. He was 12 when they came to Dulverton, to the Northmoor estate. They moved to Brushford six years later. An only child, music was his passion. He learnt the organ when he was six, and was still a teenager when he started playing for Brushford and Dulverton churches, whatever denomination. He says they were all the same.
After serving in the Royal Army Pay Corps during the war, he worked for Dulverton Sawmills. On retirement he started another life, becoming long term Clerk to Dulverton Town Council and a district councillor. He also took up photography. He says he wouldn't have been able to do half the things he had, in the parish, district and town council, without those years in the vicarage. He wouldn't have had the confidence.
postscript - Tom Troake died in March 2001