A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor


Hope Lilian Bourne (1918-2010) was a writer and artist who spent almost sixty years chronicling the landscape, wildlife, history and changing rural traditions of Exmoor. Fiercely creative and resolutely independent, she led a self-reliant life that gave her the freedom to write, draw and paint.

 

For nearly 40 years, Bourne occupied a series of dilapidated cottages and caravans on Exmoor, living off the land as much as possible. Writing provided a small and precarious income.

 

Her working materials were limited: she used the cheapest paper she could find and reused every scrap, including envelopes, the inside of cereal boxes and the backs of greetings cards. She never owned a typewriter and wrote entirely by hand.

 

Nevertheless, Bourne was a prolific creator. She made thousands of drawings and paintings, wrote and illustrated seven books, and numerous articles and letters, contributed a weekly column to The West Somerset Free Press and kept a journal.

 

The exhibition ‘A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor’ was on display at the Somerset Rural Life Museum from 27 September 2025 to 10 January 2026. It presented artworks and objects from the Exmoor Society archives, and drew on new research by writer and Guardian Country Diarist Sara Hudston, whose book A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor will be published in September 2026 by the Exmoor Society.

 

The exhibition was co-curated by Kate Best and Sara Hudston, for the South West Heritage Trust.

 

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