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Roper's Field
Prompted by the June edition of History Matters in the Wembury Review. Roper’s Field was once a small holiday settlement at the foot of Pump Hill and Church Road in Wembury, near the road down to the beach. At its heart stood a distinctive red-brick bungalow, with painted huts and little gardens around the field. By the 1990s, the place was already fading: boarded windows, broken glass, overgrowth and a sense of a once-loved place slipping away. The bungalow was later destroyed by fire, and the site returned to grass. This song remembers what was lost.
[Verse 1]
Down past Pump Hill, where Church Road fell,
Towards the beach and the wooded dell,
Old Roper’s house was waiting there,
Boarded up in the salt sea air.
Red brick walls and a weathered face,
Pointed arches, full of grace,
Grand little house in a lonely field,
Already starting to fade and yield.
[Chorus]
Roper’s Field, Roper’s Field,
Where the bright huts used to stand,
Painted doors and garden paths,
Weekend dreams from Plymouth land.
Now the grass grows over
Where the old walls used to be,
And the valley keeps its secrets
On the road down to the sea.
[Verse 2]
They said the huts were smart and bright,
Kept with pride and painted right,
Some came for summers and some to stay,
Little lives above Wembury Bay.
But we knew broken glass instead,
Boards on windows, gardens dead,
Nettles high where the paths once ran,
A beautiful place slipping out of hand.
[Bridge]
Year by year it slipped away,
Then came the fire, then came the fall,
No roof, no doorway, no house at all.
[Final Chorus]
Roper’s Field, Roper’s Field,
Where the bright huts used to stand,
Painted doors and garden paths,
Weekend dreams from Plymouth land.
Now the grass grows over
Where the old walls used to be,
And the valley keeps its secrets
On the road down to the sea.