Western Morning News (Saturday)
80-year wait for a rocking horse ride
AWOMAN whose dream of riding a wooden rocking horse was blown to pieces by Hitler’s Luftwaffe has finally had her wish granted.
Joyce Ashton was a little girl in Liverpool when she was told she could have a ride on one of the traditional rocking horses she had seen in the window of the Lewis’s department store.
But her dream was ruined the next day when the store was turned into a pile of rubble by German bombers during the May 1941 Blitz.
Eight decades on, Joyce, known to most as Joy, a retired auxiliary nurse, had the chance to fulfil her dream and ride a rocking horse just like the one she saw in the shop window.
Her son, Mark Anders, who like his mother lives in Newton Abbot, approached Harry Cridland, founder of Ringinglow Rocking Horse Company, one of the few manufacturers of traditional rocking horses left in the UK.
Mark said: “Mum is amazing. She has such a busy social life we have to book an appointment if we want to see her. She had mentioned the rocking horse before but never the full story.
“It was only when we all went to Brighton to see my niece that she talked about the German bombers destroying Lewis’s and never being able to ride one of the rocking horses again. My niece told me we had to make it happen for Mum so I have been ringing round shops, hotels and rocking horse makers around the country to see if Mum could sit on one.”
Based near Crafthole in South East Cornwall, Ringinglow Rocking Horse Company has been a supplier and restorer of traditional handmade rocking horses to Harrods, Hamleys, John Lewis and celebrities for decades. Actress Sharon Stone is known to be a fan and so are the Beckhams.
Harry said: “We set up a date and she came down with her family to our house where we make the rocking horses and we got a spot of lunch before she had a go on one of the horses.
“Over lunch she dropped in the conversation that she was four when her mum took her to Lewis’s in Liverpool and was promised that she could ride the rocking horse but never did because the German bombers blew up the store the next day.
“Joy was such a lovely woman. She’s one of these proper wartime women and all her life she had wanted to have one more ride on a rocking horse. She’s wanted to do that for 80 years and now she’s done it. I’m so pleased that we were able to make her dream come true. Our motto is to make dreams come true.”