A Carterton Great
Dee Bulley
A Carterton Great is a series of
features about remarkable Carterton
figures. This piece is about Dee
Bulley, a Carterton Town Councillor,
and Mayor of Carterton from
1983-85 and again from 1991-92. She
also became a County Councillor in
1985 and remained as such for two
decades. Sam Bennett was invited to
her home to discuss her activities.
Dee Bulley arrived in Carterton about
1975, setting up camp in the house she
is still in today. But what prompted
her to become a Town Councillor,
something she has done for nearly 40
years? “We had an extremely nasty
neighbour”, she told me, sat at her
dining room table, a dolls’ house and
piano serving as her backdrop. “He did
everything he possibly could to make
us feel uncomfortable”. Eventually,
Dee reached the end of her tether
and informed her husband, Mike, she
was going to a town council meeting,
where she knew her nasty neighbour
would be – “He went to each one and
complained about everything.” And
so one meeting saw our Carterton
Great sit behind the moaning bloke,
unbeknownst to him, and listen to
what he uttered. “I had a good go at
him when he’d finished,” Dee recalled,
“and then I said to the council: ‘When
do you have a chance for someone to
stand for a place?’ ” Before long her
papers had been handed in and she
had been elected. “My husband said ‘I
didn’t think you were going to go that
far.’ I said “Well…I have.”
More than a Town Councillor, Dee had
her first spell as Mayor from 1983-85.
In 1985 she set up a St George’s Day
dinner for the town, which continues
to this day. “At the time there were
very few places around here that
held St George’s Day festivities and
consequently we got a lot of people
coming to us from a lot of different
places for quite a few years. Then they
thought ‘why don’t we do that?’ So
there are more areas now that have
St George’s Day remembrance which I
think is good because it’s part of us.”
Dee also talked about her efforts in
bringing Carterton and RAF Brize
Norton closer together. “In 1983 it
was very much them and us, which
I felt was wrong,” she said of the
relationship. “So I phoned up and asked
the group captain to come and have
a cup of coffee with me.” During this
meeting she offered the captain the
Freedom of Carterton. At the time he
said it couldn’t be done because there
was already the Freedom of Witney.
Dee still wanted to do something
though, and a month later the RAF
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