Revisiting The Hovel Books

 Three of my favourite, never to be parted with books, are these (and apologies to Miki at Farms on my bookshelf again for copying but thanks for giving me the idea to write about some favourite books!)

I read Hovel in the Hills when it was first published in 1977 . Someone had requested it for the library where I was a library assistant and back then we often borrowed new books to read before informing readers that they had arrived (sounds odd now but it was the norm! perhaps the only perk to be had working at a low-paid council job!).

“Between the high, wild moorland of Hiraethog and the lush green lowlands of the Conwy valley, lies a scrubby rock-strewn wilderness clothed in bracken, gorse and ancient hawthorns. This untamed land is criss-crossed by lanes running between walls of moss-covered boulders, edged by foxgloves and gouged deep by centuries of plodding .

The book captured my imagination although I couldn't afford to buy it then but several years later the library started selling off books that were beginning to fall to pieces and I was lucky and picked up my copy above- for 30p - it says inside.

Front cover of Hovel in The Hills showing the back of the cottage in the snow

Hovel in the Hills tells the story of Elizabeth and Alan West who were in their late 20's and early 30's when they left their jobs in 1964 to move to a very old cottage in North Wales. For 14 years they lived a hand to mouth existence in a cottage with no mains water, electricity or drains. Each year they would have to work away from Hafod for several weeks - usually house sitting, housekeeping or gardening- to earn the money to stay there for the rest of the time. 

Garden in the Hills, published in 1980 is more about Hafod and how they tamed some of the wild land behind and beside the cottage to make a garden, protecting it with hedges and shelter belts. 

Map of the garden from my paperback edition of Garden in the Hills

 

My hardback copy of Hovel includes some photos and I understand there were also some black and white photos in the hardback version of Garden in the Hills but I've never seen them.

 

 'Garden in the Hills' is about the later years living there and ends sadly as they decide they have to move away.

In the thirteen years that we have been here we have watched civilisation creeping closer to us.......................................and all the time the road was being improved, the grass verges have been reduced, the surface broadened and the whole road has been resurfaced several times over the years. But we had our first real jolt a few years ago when we noticed that trees were being marked with white crosses alongside the road near Llanrwst. The council assured me, when I telephoned, that they were only planning to remove a nasty bend.....................Then the coaches started trying to squeze their way along the tiny road from Colwyn Bay that links with the road past Hafod. But there isn't room for coaches people said. So did they ban the coaches? No. They widened the road, and they built a wide surfaced viewing point on the topmost point of the high road. This is only about two miles from Hafod........Then the bulldozers moved in.............

Inflation meant they were having to spend more time away from Hafod working and they weren't getting any younger. In 1978 they moved away from Hafod and I'm not sure where they were living when Elizabeth wrote Kitchen in the Hills, a book of the recipes used at Hafod which was published in 1981.

Before the days of Amazon it was difficult to find secondhand books and I was very excited when I found a copy of Kitchen in the Hills in the secondhand bookshop in Felixstowe. I wrote to Mrs West via the publisher to tell her I had at last found a copy and she wrote back to tell me that she'd never been happy with the book as the publishers had made her change all the recipes to feed 4 people and add in all the oven temperatures. Of course all her cooking had been done for two and often on a wood fired stove. She thanked me for enclosing a SAE and said that they'd been unable to write back to people during their years at Hafod as even buying a stamp was impossible to afford. (I kept the note she wrote for years but then as things do, it disappeared)

 

She then went on to write 'Suffer the Little Children' and 'Insufferable Little Children' in the late 1980's  two  fictionalised books about her time as a school secretary and finally, after moving to The Forest of Dean, she wrote Patch in the Forest in 2001. I once owned the first two but no longer have them but Patch in the Forest I borrowed from a friend to read but have never owned a copy. (£55 secondhand now!)

In 2005 using hints from the books, a detailed OS map and information from a lady in Llanrwst Library we found the "hovel", still lived in and of course much improved. The high hedge in front of the house made it difficult to take a photo but I took these below

Another photo from The Hovel book taken from higher up behind the house but in much the same direction as my photo above it.

I loved the idea of living somewhere so quiet and beautiful that the birds could be tamed to sit on my hand like they did on Elizabeth's but we never got to move to Wales - however we did manage to own a smallholding for 23 years.

If I'm remembering correctly a friend wrote to Mrs West via her publishers after Patch in the Forest was published and heard back that Alan had died. If Elizabeth is still alive she would be in her late 80's now.

Miki's post are HERE  for lots more about the two Hafod books and Patch in the Forest. 

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Sue