Carolyn Chalinor

I was born in 1953 on the Welsh Borders in the County of Shropshire. I was born into a family who were very country people and who were very superstitious. I was born in a small village called Minsterley, close to the Stiperstones.

My mum worked. She wanted to be a career woman and she didn’t want children. I had wonderful grandparents who brought me up. My dad was a plumber. If he was doing some work for the farmer or something and he wanted to find out where there was a watercourse, he’d get in the village dowser. Funnily enough, he was called Mr Waters and he was an old chap who was well in his 70s by then. And his dowsing was very practical. He used to go and get himself a fresh Y-shaped hazel twig and then they’d walk about and he’d hold this twig in his hands. And when he got to where the watercourse or the drains ran, then it would bend sharply down. And he was always right. And then he would ask and intuit how deep the water was. I used to go with Dad and I used to sit and watch them. I was fascinated. So I was introduced to dowsing when I was very young and I didn’t question it.

I came from a mining background. My family had all been miners. It was all lead miners up there. When I was in my 40s, I joined the Caving and Mining Club and we did a lot of underground stuff. So it was a little like following my grandparents’ roots, my grandad’s roots. I was fortunate enough to go down to the 212 yard level in Snail Beach, down to the water table, because they’d mined it all out. The mines closed in the late 1800s after a really bad mining accident.

We moved to Worcester in the 1970s. During the 70s, I mostly did the children thing. And through about 25 years, children spread out. My family are now all grown up. They are all professional people have all done exceptionally well. I’m very proud of them. I’ve got a lovely family who are all proffessional people. I am very pround the people there. I have 11 grandchildren. And that was part of my moving back here to Malvern after having had 26 years down in Cornwall. There I had a lot of friends but no family.

In 1988 I decided I wanted to go back to work and so I applied for a job as an occupational therapy technician. I’d worked as casual nursing, but it appealed to me to keep people occupied and busy. And I applied for a job at Rowan House, which was in Osborne Road in Malvern Link, and I got the job. And I worked there for six and a half years as an occupational therapist organising group work. I then went and did aromatherapy course in Malvern in 1991 with two other nurses. It was actually when Powick shut, we took over one of the wards and moved into the community. As people passed on, we went over to having a day care facility for the Malvern community. And also provided respite care with people coming in to stay for a few days at a time.

We worked very holistically. It was very much about hands-on and being spiritual with people and understanding, not just their nursing needs but also their spiritual needs. These were the halcyon days. We really did stuff that people weren’t doing. I then looked at doing art therapy training because I was using art as a medium as therapist.

It was an amazing place to work. I learnt a lot. As I got developed an interest in healing, I started visiting Runnings Park. It was a conference centre and a healing centre. In the day, there was Anna and Tony Neat, who I think have both passed, and David Furlong. And we used to go up there and practice meditation and healing.

I moved back from Rowan House in 1995 when my youngest daughter was born. I went back and worked at the psychiatric hospital in Worcester. I was very much into healing. I trained in Evesham with the National Federation of Spiritual Healing, and I completed all the requered units and qualifed as a healer. So I was accredited to the Healing Trust.

I loved Malvern. Its wells, its architecture, the water. I was working here. I took my driving test here. My son went to school here for two years.And I just loved the energy. I lived in Worcester, so I didn’t live very far away.

I loved Malvern’s history. I love the connections to Elgar and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and all the other really famous people that have visted Malvern in the past. Was C.S. Lewis influenced by the lamppost, the Narnia thing? I’d love to think he was.

It wasn’t just the town. It was the wider area. I knew the area well, and knew the Welsh borders because I was born there and all the border country.

So I’d got the connection to Malvern and to the local life. We used to come across and walk the hills regularly, and I just always loved the energy here. It’s a good energy. It’s a stabilising, balanced energy. I don’t think it’s to do with the seasons. I think it’s to do with Malvern, where it is, its geography. It’s an ancient land. The hills and the water. I think it’s a very healing place and that’s why I’m drawn back to it. I feel that there is a lot of love.

In 1997, we moved to Cornwall. We wanted to live by the sea. When I was in Cornwall I again worked for mental health and I was based in Penzance. The NHS sponsored me through art therapy training. So I worked as a therapist and an art therapist. It is huge privilege to work with people in that way.

While I was in Cornwall, I connected deeply to the pagan pursuits. I joined a pagan moot out in West Penrith. It’s got a very pagan landscape. The energies are very heavy, they are quite dark in a lot of places in Cornwall. Whether that’s from mining or whether it’s just in the land, there’s a lot of heavy sadness down there that you can pick up on. You could draw a circle from St Ives round through Penzance and back round to St Ives. And in that circle, it’s very dark. You could step outside of it. I was very happy down in Cornwall and I did a lot of dowsing around the ancient sites.

In 2006, I left the NHS and went to work for social care in family work as a family worker and as family therapist. We were working with families with mental health problems. So we used to treat them holistically as a family unit, not stigmatising one person. That was fascinating work.

In 2012, I was seriously ill. I had a brain aneurysm and thankfully I recovered from it. I’m incredibly lucky to be here. So I didn’t go back to social work. In 2015, I decided life was more important and I did a lot of travelling. And I worked in care settings but I didn’t want to do anything that was too stressful. And I had to work because I was a WASPI lady. I should have retired at 60 but I had to work till I was 65 plus. So I worked as a kind of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ for a lovely lady in Devon who was in her 90s. She had lost her partner and wanted to go out and about. So I lived in with her for a week on and then a week off. I used to take her out and we’d go and have something to eat out and drive around the Devon countryside. It was brilliant. She was amazing. She was so feisty and she was great. And she’s was very spiritual lady on another level. She used to talk to the clouds. We used to park up and watch the clouds for hours.

And then COVID happened so I decided to retire and stay safe. My son suggested moved back up be Worcestshire to be nearer to them.

I’d had my name now for a residential property in Cornwall. I thought, “You know what? I’d love to live back in Malvern. I wonder if they’ve got a similar place in Malvern.” So I had a look online, and they had. I called in on my way back to Cornwall and I put myself on the Malvern list. And then it was a case of wait for a property to come up. And I knew it was the right thing to do. I thought, “I need to be back in Malvern”. It was as simple as that.

Then this February a property became available in Malvern and it was like being given a gift. It’s brilliant. I just feel completely at home. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I feel safe here. I feel protected. And I’ve got my car. I can still get on with my life and go where I want to.

I have views to the hills. What more do I want?

I couldn’t live just anywhere, the energy of where I live is important. I used to drive up and down the motorway to visit family, and the hills are there in the line. And it’s like Tolkien’s Shire and Tolkien’s hills. And they’re blue. For me it’s the ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ in reference to A E Hausman and the Shorpshire Hills, my birthplace. And the Malvern Hills are now my home hills.

When I was working in art therapy I had a picture that kept coming out, it occurred and occurred and occurred in pictures I did. And it was always of two trees. And then these hills in the background and a road leading towards them. And I never attributed it to the Malverns. But when I moved back here and I went into a card shop and a noticed a specifc card which was my picture. And I thought, “That’s my picture.” And that’s what this was about. And I’m quite clear now that it was about: “this is where you should be”. I was actually drawing Malvern framed. So I wanted to be back in the Malverns as an older person. It’s has an energy that I’m happy in. It wraps itself around me. It just allows me to be who I am. There’s nowhere else that I want to be but here.

On my return to Malvern I joined the Malvern Dowsing Society and attended a couple meetings which rekindled my interest in dowsing. They are very welcoming people. As I said, I was aware of it from a very young age, from about seven onwards working with dad. It was something that you did, it was practical and you can’t really explain it. I’d always had an interest in it and it was on and off through my life. I had a friend that made me these dowsing rods back while I was in Cornwall. And I’ve I used them down there prolifically, went round to all the different ancient sites and to see what reactions I would got. If you wanted to ask questions or personal questions, you can do, and you can use it to find things as well. Nobody knows how it works and I don’t question it, I know it does work and that’s it.

We’ve got a beautiful land. These hills are ancient. They hold this ancient energy that is almost like a part of me, if I can describe that. I feel like I could be the hills and they could be me. I feel a really close connection to the earth anyway, but Malvern is special. Being in Malvern is like a clear picture, it’s exactly clear. It’s where I should be and I know it’s where I should be. I’m home, completely home. Everybody needs to belong somewhere. This to me is home. I get up every day now and know I’m home.