SIXTY years ago, Wellington and the villages surrounding it were under several feet of snow as the winter of 1962-63 went down as one of the harshest in nearly 150 years.

On Monday, Shirley Gooding turned 60 years old with her mother Betty Norman recounting the story of how four men and a bulldozer took nearly all day to dig her out of her Ashbrittle farmhouse so she could give birth.

The snow of ’63 was so deep it topped the hedgerows and blocked country roads and made the A38 almost impassable in places, trapping many cars and lorries, while schools and other services were forced to close.

Betty’s doctor told her she had to attend the then-Wellington Maternity Home two weeks before her due date because of complications when she had Shirley’s older brother Christopher.

But it was impossible for Betty and husband Percy to leave Burrow Farm and for a time they faced the prospect of a farmhouse birth.

Betty told the Wellington Weekly this week: “The snow was over the top of the hedges and we could not get out of the farm at all.

“A helicopter came to start with and flew over but it could not pitch down.

“So, then they made alternative arrangements for a contractor with a bulldozer, Colin Howe, from Greenham.”

Mr Howe and his team took six hours to plough through the snowbound lanes and reach Burrow Farm, and then it was more than another two hours before they managed to deliver Betty to the maternity home.

Betty said: “It helped the whole village with the bulldozer coming in because it meant they could bring in bread and supplies and post.

“Then they brought in a big truck and some blankets and wrapped me up and took me to Wellington, where two weeks later Shirley was born.”

Even once Betty was settled in the maternity home, her problems were not over, because the water pipes froze and staff and patients did not have any running water.

Percy actually delivered six churns of water to help out – but in an almost psychic way Betty was convinced the taps would work and when she tried one, the water flowed.

Betty’s experience was reported on at the time by the Wellington Weekly and afterwards Percy carried around the newspaper cutting in his wallet until his death in 2001.

Shirley said: “Dad would get the newspaper clipping out of his wallet on every birthday and tell me the story.

“He used to tell me I was in the paper before I was even born.”

Betty, who will celebrate her 85th birthday next month, farmed with Percy in Ashbrittle for 34 years before moving to a farm in Bawdrip, near Bridgwater.

She said: “We farmed with Percy’s brother and we had four children and they had four children, and if you live in a farmhouse with eight children, one of us had to move on."

Now, she lives in Puriton, near Bridgwater, close to Shirley, who farms pigs in Pawlett with husband Philip and their sons Jake and Daniel.

To celebrate her ‘big’ birthday, Shirley was taking a trip to Chudleigh, Devon, with her grandchildren and then having a family meal, followed at the weekend by a trip to London to see a musical.

Her birthday celebrations will not stop there, as she has planned a whole ‘birthday year’ of monthly activities, including a summer week when her classmates from the former Rossholme Girls’ School, East Brent, near Burnham on Sea, will all be gathering together, one of them travelling from America for the occasion.

Shirley said: “A lot of them are also turning 60 together so we are having this big occasion. It has taken a year to plan. We are all still schoolgirls when we get together.”

Betty farmed until she was 77 before retiring and still has many family in the Wellington area, most of them having also been farmers, including sisters Joan Greenway and Christine Hendy, who are in Wiveliscombe, and Phyllis Stevens, in Exford, on Exmoor.

Her nephew Terry Payne still farms just outside Wellington, at Woodford Farm, in Wrangway.

And Shirley’s cousin, Robert Norman, still farms today in Ashbrittle at the family’s Burrow Farm.