Dartmoor National Park Authority

As a child Mary lived at the Peter Tavy Inn and took over the running of it from her parents when she married. In those days the pub was just one room and beer was served straight from the barrel. Mary also provided simple lunches and cream teas for visitors:

"I used to do teas afternoons, of course they didn’t do so much food in pubs; the main thing you had was bread and cheese in those days, you know, bread and cheese, which was a square of bread cut into four with a lump of cheese on, that would have been just about all that country pubs did. But we did afternoon teas, which was jam and cream on tuffs, do you know what a tuff is? Not a scone, it’s a bread mixture, yeah… Of course [we’d] get a lot of people coming walking on Dartmoor in those days, and we used to take people in for holidays and get them coming back year after year."

"…and you used to have spontaneous singing in those days, now they’ll say there’ll be music on such and such a night, but, you know, as the mood took ‘em and depending on how much they’d had to drink, well not necessary had to drink, um, they’d sing, you know, and nearly always sang the same old songs…and each one would have a speciality, but you know, that would go on after kick-out time, as we called it, yeah. Otto Allen, he was the one, he lived at Lydford, but he used to come down to our pub always, and he would strike up and that would be the singing then."