interview
Island Life - June/July 2010
Photo: With Jamie on their engagement 1983. Inset: Susie pictured at the 2010 Hunt Ball held at Kings Manor Farm.
Competitive but not exclusive
Roz Whistance meets a woman pivotal to the country life of the
Island. Susie Sheldon wants everyone to have the chance to enjoy
the things she does
WHEN you meet Susie Sheldon that
very successful farm shop and café;
lived-in sitting room, and cushions,
age-old truism comes to mind: if you
in her spare time she does the books
scattered carelessly across the sofas are
want something done, ask a busy
for Yarmouth Sailing Club, is a school
embroidered mock-grandly with ‘Lord
woman.
governor and until recently was
of the Manor’ and ‘Lady of the Manor’:
treasurer of the Pony Club. And now
there is not an ounce of Susie Sheldon
live at King’s Manor Farm, set on the
Jamie has taken on Yarmouth’s iconic
that plays the grande dame.“King’s
salt marshes of the Yar estuary, where
chandlery, Harwoods.
Manor used to be called Freshwater
Susie Sheldon and her husband Jamie
they farm rare breed sheep and cattle.
“Sometimes I do wake up and wish
Farm, until someone changed the name,
But that isn’t the half of it. Susie is
I was a hermit in a one-room croft
thinking it sounded much grander,” she
Master of the Hunt, and hosts the
in Scotland,” Susie confesses. Then,
grins. Jamie’s parents bought the house
annual Hunt Ball; she organises the
flashing her unconquerable smile: “But
in 1967. “It was in a totally dilapidated
annual Scurry and she presides over
it doesn’t last long.”
state, but they wanted a cottage on the
King’s Manor’s shoots; she runs a
62
We are chatting in the reassuringly
Isle of Wight as a base to go sailing,”
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