Parsonage Farm I – cats, dogs, children and tea-time

Life at Parsonage farm includes courageous cats, cute kittens, sweet Shetland collies, appealing puppies and kids in the kitchen.

Parsonage Farm at Publow, near Pensford, Bristol was purchased by Arnold W Pym, chief accountant at Imperial Tobacco, Bristol, and his wife Jenny (nee Zaaijer), a botanist. There they created a garden of note and brought up four children who helped to care for the cats, kittens, dogs and puppies which found homes there and have been skillfully and lovingly caught on camera by Arnold, a keen photographer/film-maker, as they engage in the essentials – feeding and playing.

Arnold William Pym was born 1902 in South Shields, Durham, moving as a boy with his family to Edinburgh. Jenny Zaaijer was born in 1910 in Zaandvoort in the Netherlands. Here Jenny is seen preparing and having tea in the farmhouse kitchen with Michael (b.1936), Frances (b.1938), John (b.1944) and Andrew (b.1946). The family would regularly visit Whitesands Bay, St Davids, Pembrokeshire, and Frances (as Frances Roughley) has lived in Pembrokeshire from 1986, one of her daughters living in Ceredigion.