Women Writing on the Devon Land: A County's Women Who Wrote - circa 1965

        Okehampton Castle Photo Julie Sampson Writing Women on the Devon Land A-Z of Devon Women Writers & Places On the Ways to the Old Literary Roads around Okehampton          I could have chosen Offwell, Ogwell, Okeford, Otterton, or Ottery St Mary. But for this Alphabet of Devon Women Writers (up to about 1960), I settled on Okehampton. It's partly nostalgia, the town being a favourite place of my childhood, where I (albeit fairly briefly) and before me, both my parents attended school. I don't know of any individual woman author whose home was in the parish up to circa 1960 - but I do know several who included the place in their writings. Rosalind Northcote, Mary Ward and Sophie Dixon all set down in text their personal responses to the scenic, and/or historical characteristic of the Okehampton locality ...      ...  It is not just the romantic lines of Okehampton castle ruin that call, either when you spot Okehampton castle from the dual carriage

Women Writing on the Devon Land A-Z of Devon Women Writers & Places Lapford Around Lapford, possible places of the site of Dowriche's home in the C16. Lane and Vie of Parsonage Farm & Court Barton across the road from the church. Photo Julie Sampson       It’s not easy to adjust your field of vision and cut out all the paraphernalia of modern life, even in a small village, or hamlet. The traffic and take-aways, the maze-like housing estates, all the accoutrements of contemporary rural life screen out what is inevitably there somewhere, just below and behind the surface. A wall; a ruin; a high hedge; an eave jutting out from a building; a mound in a field; an old house over there, with turrets.       See there, the other side of the valley; there's a monument inside the village church (if, that is, you're lucky and the door is not locked). But here I am, late autumn, atop the village, walking up toward Lapford church; the village landmark.