Helen Skrine No. 1

Helen Skrine began the recording by retracing her family background, her mother’s mother being a St Leger, who became an orphan at the age of five. Her father was Francis Boxwell who inherited lands from his own father. For three generations they had been absentee landlords for the majority of the time, and as a result, much of the family’s lands were divided up by the Land Commission and allocated to local tenants. Helen has strong views on the religiously divided society of her youth, which held a small community of Protestants in a strongly Catholic country. She recalls her father’s hopes and aspirations at a time when there were great financial difficulties during the thirties and his firm stance in holding onto the lands which he dearly loved. She also recalled her four years with the BBC Music Department and her return home in the early fifties.