Can anyone help me identify this mid century 'rural memoir' book? (not Elizabeth West)

[TheBookShelf]

Can anyone help me identify this ‘rural memoir’ book? One I read in the 70s or 80s and would love to reread. I think it was set post WW2.

Woman (and I think also her husband? Or possibly her parents) move to smallholding /small farm/off grid type of life to a cottage in, I think, rural Wales or Scotland. Book is about their adventures in new lifestyle on very little money. I think set some time between about 1950 and 1970.

I have Elizabeth West’s Hovel in the Hills and all the sequels, and the several farming memoirs by Ruth Janette Ruck (A Place of Stones, etc) , and it’s definitely not any of those.

The one distinctive episode I remember is that the author makes herself a patchwork skirt, as she can’t afford to buy a new one.

Ideas welcome!

Can't help you I'm afraid, but I have EWs novel in the Hills, loved it, and also kitchen in the hills. Did she write some more books?

Yes, she also wrote Garden in the Hills (book 2 in the series) and Patch in the Forest (which was about their later life in the Forest of Dean). The latter is hard to find but pops up occasionally on ebay etc. She also wrote two books about her years as a school secretary after they left Wales. Suffer Little Children and Insufferable Little Children.

Is it A Croft in the Hills (1960) by Katharine Stewart

Thank you but no, not A Croft in the Hills, which I read recently.

There is this one specific episode I remember about the author making a patchwork skirt. Something also about very rainy weather (though that is part of the territory with this type of memoir!).

Thanks for that. I think I have garden in the hills, but I'll look out for the others.

Reviving this thread a year on, as I'm still racking my brains over this long lost vaguely remembered book! Any fresh ideas of possible solutions would be most welcome. I've read a lot of twentieth century 'we homesteaded/went off grid/bought a tumbledown rural cottage' type of memoir, but this one continues to elude me. It was definitely set in the uk and definitely involved a home made patchwork skirt. I read it in the 70s or 80s. Any further thoughts?

Was it ‘Seasons of my Life’ by Hannah Hauxwell?

Lillian Beckwith? There was a whole series of them.

Thank you, not sure, but a possible - I'll look into this one.

Thanks- I don't think it is Lilian Beckwith as I've read some of hers.

A Ram in the Well by June Knox Mawer?

John Seymour’s ‘the fat of the land’?

Is it a children’s book? It did make me think briefly of Jill’s Gymkhaha actually! I’d love to reread those again.

There is a book forum somewhere, maybe Abe books or something, they had a section for queries, or does Good Reads have a forum?

Not that one. From what I remember, it's told from a female perspective.

That one is too recent a publication - the book I'm looking for is one I read in the late 1970s or the 1980s.

Definitely not a children's book. I share your enthusiasm for Jill's Gymkhana though - thankfully I have kept my childhood copies of that series!

(@NoCommentingFromNowOn - Google Jane Badger Books if you want to reread the Jill books. She bought the copyright and sells them as e-reader downloads. I may have bought the entire set recently).

I put patchwork skirt and rural setting into Gemini (I know!) and it suggested Susan Hill and the Magic Apple Tree. Could it be that?

I’ve just spent a happy hour or two looking at that website, thanks!

@PermanentTemporary Actually quite shocked to see the first one was published in 1949, which means that when I was reading it (1978) it was only as old as the first Harry Potter would be if I was reading it now - 29 years after publication.

That’s some weird time thing, like the ‘Cleopatra lived closer in time to us than the building of the pyramids’ or whatever it is.

1997 feels like a couple of years ago, but when I was eight, 1949 was an incredibly long time ago.

I have this book, first published 1982, it takes you through the seasons in an Oxfordshire village. Mostly about garden produce, creatures and festivals - with recipes. I have flicked through but can't spot any sewing!

Are you sure it’s not Hovel in the Hills as that’s what Google (?) strongly suggests:

Chapter 11 or 12 maybe?

Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Country-Diary-Edwardian-Lady/dp/0718115813