Hi - I used to live next door to the Bodles farm in Alfriston.
I lived there from 1965-1970. The school house I lived in has been removed now , but was near where they have moved the second school building to.
Lorna Wilson , our other neighbour wrote a small booklet , I can track down a copy and scan it if you like, it will have everything you need
https://www.worldcat.org/title/vintage-years-a-record-of-alfriston-brookby-since-the-1850s/oclc/154237039She was the one who had the original school moved onto their place.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brian_robinson_nz/9740674514I don’t remember much about the Bodles , but my mother was the teacher, knew everyone. She s dead now ,but I can help track someone for you, or ask at the local saturday market.
My sister and I used to go over occasionally and pick fruit, they were always super friendly, and told us to help ourselves it we grabbed them a couple. They had a beautiful mandarin tree my sister and I still remember. And we picked laundry baskets of mushrooms there. My sister grazed her horse there.
The original guy living there came to give a talk at the school about the ostrich farm, and brought some eggs to show us. He told us they led the ostriches out to the ostrich farm, which is miles away , with blindfolds on , on foot. I was only 5 or so , so memory is a bit hazy on details, so I had a look online. I thought they had ostriches on their farm , but there was a lot bought off the L.D. Nathans at Whitford and taken to the ostrich farm . Maybe they bought some or just had the job of transporting them in batches , and they overnighted there or something . There weren’t any ostrich proof fences that I remember.
https://timespanner.blogspot.com/2012/02/ostriches-and-politics-helvetia-ostrich.htmlI saw that a Q.M.Bodle organised a military camp at the ostrich farm , but then saw a Nathan had organised there the next year, so no idea. LD Nathan were very well known in NZ .
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19050719.2.73 https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22878669https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19061017.2.94I noticed too that googling that just after that, Mrs Bodle out with the very well known Mrs Nathan and Mrs Myers. They wrote down the costumes in the order they met them I imagine. If you look at paperspast you will often see Bodle and Nathan together. I went to school with one of them, also one of the Muirs who were from alfristion , so will ask for photos if you think they had a connection . A lot of the ladies were wearing ostrich at the time.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19061227.2.56Two or three guys, I think they were all Bodles, but maybe I am confused, and it was owned by the Bodles ,lived next door 1967-1972 . Fenton Smith ,the farmer across the rd found at least one of them dead, or so I was told, maybe to scare us off visiting . Then it was abandoned for years. We used to go over and pick fruit and mushrooms , and to check out the “haunted house “.
One of them used to drill holes in huge macrocarpas and dynamite them, we could hear them from school. There was a whatever you call the metal insert tube thingy to stick the dynamite in left in the shed outside when the house was abandoned.
Was the big old falling down huge villa across the rd Dr Bodles ? We used to play in that a lot on rainy days as kids .The floor had given way in places , most of the decking too.
There was a huge grape vine as old as the house growing up into a tree there we used to climb to pick grapes . It was nowhere near the trunk , the tree is a big native tree with no lower branches , so quite a climb. Possibly still there if you want to get a cutting ( from about 10 metres high I imagine).
