David Rabbitts - A Country Lad

David AJ Rabbitts was born in the West Country in 1942. His father and ancestry on both sides of the family had strong country and gamekeeping traditions. David’s family moved to Cotherstone in Teesdale in 1946 where David grew up learning, as his parents before him, how the countryside worked, including the farming and the wildlife.

After leaving school he served as a butcher, slaughterman for thirteen years, keeping the family tradition of always being close to the farming population. After marrying Morlene, a farmer’s daughter, he moved just one hundred yards down the road from Balder Grange Cottage to Glendale, a home they built together in 1964.

Leaving the meat trade in 1969 David and Morlene bought the local retail milk business which they expanded and worked together for 22 years to the day. During this past 38 years his working life had enabled him to remain each day and every day in the environment he loved, Teesdale’s countryside.

In 1991 Morlene and David sold the business in favour of fulfilling Morlene’s wish, to do B&B at Glendale. It was then that David fulfilled his wish to film the subject he had spent his life with, Teesdale’s countryside in its entirety. ‘Beautiful Teesdale - A Country Lad at Home’ is the result.