Page 16 - C.A.L.L. #39 - Spring 2015

My children grew up in a commune

When she found herself a single mum with a young baby, Dinah
Jefferies decided to try communal living. It was idealistic and it
didn't last, but it was a magical time where children roamed freely
and a shiny new world seemed possible.

I don't even recall how I found out about the first commune I visited, but it
eventually led me to take Jamie to live with a rock band at Church Farm, a rambling
Elizabethan house in Sotherton, Suffolk owned by James and Jeremy Lascelles. At
that time none of us was impressed by who they were, and even now I have had to
look them up on Wikipedia to be sure.

James played keyboards in the band
and is still a musician. He is a first
cousin, once removed, of the Queen,
and is the second son of the late 7th
Earl of Harewood and his first wife,
Marion Stein. He and his younger
brother Jeremy are great-grandsons
of George V, and second cousins to
the Prince of Wales. Jeremy was the
Children from the Church Farm commune, with manager of the band, and went on to
Jamie on the left and Laurel in the centre.
become CEO of Chrysalis Music. Their
mother Marion was, by then, remarried, to the Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe.
The band's drummer was Sir Simon Stewart-Richardson: a baronet. The three of
them were posh, though the rest of us weren't.

For Jamie and me, there were advantages and disadvantages to living with 20 adults
and eight or so children under the age of five. On the plus side, Jamie loved
roaming the farm grounds with his readymade "brothers and sisters", and many
"aunties and uncles" looking on. With such a large extended family, I never had that
trapped feeling some women experience when stuck home alone with kids.

My second child, Laurel, was born at Church Farm. I remember the midwife's
horror when she realised that I intended to give birth on purple sheets with an
audience looking on. We were a close-knit and strangely traditional bunch of hippies,
we bought our clothes at jumble sales, and ate an awful lot of brown rice. Too much.
I hate the stuff now.

The good times, amplified by sharing them with so many others, were wonderful.
We were known for our dancing, both in the garden during the summer when the
band were rehearsing, or at their many shows up and down the country, from the

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