Lydia’s grandparents Ernest and Nora Otter moved from Yorkshire to Oxfordshire with two of their sons and bought Pennyhooks because they ‘loved it at first sight’ . They worked to revitalise the farm and in doing so rebuilt their own lives after the war .
This included Frank and Sheena Otter and Geoffrey and Jean Otter each raising their families here. Jean wrote, for a 1950’s radio broadcast ‘Life on the farm, though full and busy, has a timelessness and peace quite unknown in a town;and is an ideal place for bringing up a family. It’s become my world and I love it’ .
All the children helped on the farm, as Geoff had himself helped as a teenager to bring in the harvest during the war, on the Hatfield Main Colliery’s farm where his father had been a financial secretary; and which had begun Geoff’s lifelong love of & dedication to farming that inspired his family to go farming & ultimately to purchase Pennyhooks Farm.