Obituary - John Spreadbury 1931 - 2022
John Spreadbury John Spreadbury was born in Droxford on 13th July 1931. His mother was called Annie and his stepfather was William Spreadbury, a local farmer who happens to be buried in Meonstoke. His mother died when he was young and is buried in Bolney churchyard. John was schooled at Stoneham in Eastleigh. He had no siblings. John’s early experience of work was riding cart horses to the farriers for shoeing, but when he left school at 15, as was usual in those days, he got his first job with Austen Moulden at Preshaw. He then moved to Western Farms at Petersfield and it was from there that he won his first ploughing match, at Rogate, aged 17. And it was there he saw my father’s advertisement for a tractor driver at Stocks just as we moved in in 1950. Rita says that when he mentioned the wage he expected, my father replied, ‘That’s a man’s wage and you’re a boy’, but he was persuaded to move not by the wage, but by the fact that my father offered him a new...