As far as I can tell, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm and their ilk have left town, the up-market set have moved in and
scary things no longer happen in woodsheds. Or do they?
However, Starkadders aside, I have come to Sussex in
search of quite another story. A whole series of stories in fact. Many works of fiction are set in factual locations making it possible to visit those places and find the inspiration behind the story. With that in mind, a few days after
arriving in the tiny village of Graffham, West Sussex, I ventured north
a little way into Surrey.
The location I was seeking was the
Devil's Punch Bowl, a gigantic bowl-shaped valley gouged from the
earth by a complicated geological process sometime in the distant past. The books I had in mind were the Punchbowl Farm series written by children's author, Monica Edwards, who wrote many children's books in the mid decades
of the twentieth century.
The National Trust now manage the
Devil's Punch Bowl and so finding it was as simple as putting the
postcode into the sat nav then parking in their car park (free for
National Trust members, Australia included).
Monica Edwards and her husband and
children lived on the edge of the Punch Bowl on the appropriately
named, Punch Bowl Farm. She wrote many children's books at a time
when high adventure was the order of the day in children's fiction
but everyday problems and difficulties were overcome along the way.
Enid Blyton was a more prolific and popular writer than Edwards, but
Edwards' books are far superior in style and vocabulary.
The Punchbowl Farm (Punchbowl becoming
one word in the books) series told of the adventures of the Thornton
family, the four children in particular, of course. The books were
written over a twenty-year period from 1947 to 1967 while Monica and
her husband revitalised the derelict farm and restored the old
farmhouse. They built up a herd of pedigree Jersey cattle and many of
the everyday events of life at Punch Bowl Farm became the stuff of
Monica's stories.
It's not difficult to imagine yourself
into the Punchbowl books in this wild and beautiful place. Paths
criss-cross and wander up and down, through woods where fallen trees
become a home for forest creatures, and over the rim of the Punch
Bowl where heather blazes purple on the high ground. A perfect setting for stories of adventure and high drama.
Four cottages remain within the Bowl,
one of which is now a youth hostel, and patches of lush grassland are
grazed by cattle who keep weedy species under control.
The highest point on the rim of the
Bowl is called Gibbet Hill. It is a place for sombre reflection as on
this spot there once stood a nine metre high gibbet where criminals
were hanged and their bodies tarred and encased in a fitted metal
frame then left swinging from the gibbet to rot. A large granite
Celtic Cross now stands in its place, erected in 1851 in an effort to
dispel the fears of the local population who believed the place to be
haunted.
Scary things in woodsheds vs haunted
hills. It would seem that Surrey, like Sussex, has its share of
legends, once all grist for the fertile imagination of Monica
Edwards.
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