Dartmoor National Park Authority

Edith was one of a family of six born and brought up in a two up one down cottage at Poundsgate and has lived all her life in the parish of Widecombe-in-the-Moor. When she was a child her mother did all the cooking on an open fire:

“When I think, you know mornings when I get up and put the kettle on and just switch on and its boiling, and she used to have to get up and, well Dad would always bring in the ‘morning sticks’ he used to call it, bring in the sticks to light the fire and boil the kettle on in the morning. It used to smoke like hell and the only place you could get out the smoke was sit in the fireplace!”

“…across the road then we used to get the water, where the trough is, but before my mother left they brought it into the yard… but when I was young like we used to go across the road, and for the toilet, we used to have a good laugh about that! If you had to get up in the night it was – yeah, I can remember going down these steps and out the door and across the road"

That’s perseverance, you didn’t have a guzunder for the night?

Well we did for to spend a penny but you weren’t allowed to do anything else!”