The publication of a new book set in Devon is always good news, but the publication of one as captivating as A Breath of Moonscent: Memories of a Devon Childhood is a cause for celebration. There are few authors who know rural Devon well enough to write about it convincingly but Allan Boxall, now in his early eighties, knows it well and worked on A Breath of Moonscent for almost twenty years before he ventured to publish it. His hard work has paid off. The book describes the area in intimate and affectionate detail and will delight anyone who loves the Devon countryside and its people.
Allan Boxall moved to North Devon with his parents during the Second World War, when he was four years old. It was a wonderful childhood, Allan was free to roam the countryside and he soon made friends, acquiring a Devon accent along the way. He attended school in Dolton and then Torrington, and worked on a farm for eighteen months before eventually leaving Devon to join the Navy.
A Breath of Moonscent focusses on an area of North Devon that has been lovingly documented before. The Dolton area was the subject of much work by the eminent photographer James Ravilious, who created an invaluable record of rural life when he worked for the Beaford Photographic Archive. The aim of the project was to capture the very special and individual nature of North Devon just as it was starting to change. Allan Boxall’s written account depicts the same area at an earlier time, before change was envisaged, and he portrays in words what Ravilious achieved in images.
This is not a romanticised account of rural life. There are hardships, there are deaths, there are regrets, but the author shows that these events are part of the natural cycle of life. Reading his portrayals of the people of Dolton, one feels one has known them personally – or, at least, seen a Ravilious photograph of them:
‘Tom Baker was a tough old fellow, gnarled and stringy as a war-scarred tomcat, a face weather-beaten and ravaged by seventy years of sun, rain, and biting winds, pocked by the savage stings of angry wasps which had attacked him when he accidently hacked into their nest whilst paring a hedge, mean and short-tempered through decades of failed harvests which he remembered more than the successful ones.’
Some of the people Boxall writes about were indeed photographed by Ravilious in later years including one of Ravilious’s favourite subjects, Archie Parkhouse, who is as familiar from Boxall’s description as he is in the photographs.
Until comparatively recent times, life in North Devon was dominated by the seasons and the weather, because most people either worked on the land, or walked or cycled along miles of narrow lanes to reach school or work. Boxall recalls in loving detail the skeletal woods and barren fields of winter, the magical return of spring when ‘Snowdrops lined the brook like a carpet of green-tinted snow’, the summer hedgerows ‘awash with summer seas of umbellifers and red campion; honey bees and bumble bees, wood wasps and butterflies; a kaleidoscope of pastel colours shimmering and swaying,’ and autumn, ‘with the beech leaves golden, the oak secreting fawn-brown acorns neat in their pitted cups.’
Alongside the lyrical descriptions of landscape, there are many amusing stories. The account of moving house, - when a steep, stony lane had to be descended with a china cabinet, Calor gas stove and other household bits and pieces piled high on a cart drawn by an excitable horse - is likely to make the reader laugh out loud.
A Breath of Moonscent takes us back to a magical era in North Devon, when life was hard but the rewards were great; when there was no roar of distant traffic, when the stars were brighter, and the silence was disturbed only by the hoot of an owl or the bark of a fox.
A Breath of Moonscent focusses on an area of North Devon that has been lovingly documented before. The Dolton area was the subject of much work by the eminent photographer James Ravilious, who created an invaluable record of rural life when he worked for the Beaford Photographic Archive. The aim of the project was to capture the very special and individual nature of North Devon just as it was starting to change. Allan Boxall’s written account depicts the same area at an earlier time, before change was envisaged, and he portrays in words what Ravilious achieved in images.
This is not a romanticised account of rural life. There are hardships, there are deaths, there are regrets, but the author shows that these events are part of the natural cycle of life. Reading his portrayals of the people of Dolton, one feels one has known them personally – or, at least, seen a Ravilious photograph of them:
‘Tom Baker was a tough old fellow, gnarled and stringy as a war-scarred tomcat, a face weather-beaten and ravaged by seventy years of sun, rain, and biting winds, pocked by the savage stings of angry wasps which had attacked him when he accidently hacked into their nest whilst paring a hedge, mean and short-tempered through decades of failed harvests which he remembered more than the successful ones.’
Some of the people Boxall writes about were indeed photographed by Ravilious in later years including one of Ravilious’s favourite subjects, Archie Parkhouse, who is as familiar from Boxall’s description as he is in the photographs.
Until comparatively recent times, life in North Devon was dominated by the seasons and the weather, because most people either worked on the land, or walked or cycled along miles of narrow lanes to reach school or work. Boxall recalls in loving detail the skeletal woods and barren fields of winter, the magical return of spring when ‘Snowdrops lined the brook like a carpet of green-tinted snow’, the summer hedgerows ‘awash with summer seas of umbellifers and red campion; honey bees and bumble bees, wood wasps and butterflies; a kaleidoscope of pastel colours shimmering and swaying,’ and autumn, ‘with the beech leaves golden, the oak secreting fawn-brown acorns neat in their pitted cups.’
Alongside the lyrical descriptions of landscape, there are many amusing stories. The account of moving house, - when a steep, stony lane had to be descended with a china cabinet, Calor gas stove and other household bits and pieces piled high on a cart drawn by an excitable horse - is likely to make the reader laugh out loud.
A Breath of Moonscent takes us back to a magical era in North Devon, when life was hard but the rewards were great; when there was no roar of distant traffic, when the stars were brighter, and the silence was disturbed only by the hoot of an owl or the bark of a fox.
Devon Author Allan Boxall
A Breath of Moonscent: Memories of a Devon Childhood by Allan Boxall
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A Breath of Moonscent: Memories of a Devon Childhood by Allan Boxall
Published by Blue Poppy Publishing
Available from www.bluepoppypublishing.co.uk or from
bookshops.----------
Liz Shakespeare is the author of five books set in Devon.
Tap here to visit Liz Shakespeare's website
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About Beaford Arts "The Beaford Archive is an extraordinary collection of material about North Devon dating back to 1890. It is best known for its photographs by James Ravilious, for whom the Archive was his life’s work, and it was one of the first commissions taken on by Roger Deakins, now an Oscar-winning cinematographer."
Tap this link to visit "HERE: Uncovering North Devon"
