The legacy of Devon’s women food writers

Paul Cleave, who spoke at our 2025 Annual Conference on Women and Food, explores the varied aspects of Devon women’s cookery books and what they tell us about women’s role in society.

 

My research interests reflect a long term and ongoing investigation of Devon’s food history – its traditions, customs, recipes, rituals, and ingredients. More recently I have become interested in the food writers, and the women who, through their recipes and narratives, were important in recording Devon’s food story and wanted to give them a voice through food. 

Devon is a county well known for its traditions of agriculture and food production, from meat, fish, fruit, and of course dairy produce – milk, clotted cream, butter, and cheese. For generations these have been documented by visitors, scholars, and academics who were attracted to the landscapes and antiquities of the county where they often encountered and enjoyed rural hospitality. The structure and focus of my research draws on a rich and diverse visual, oral, and written historiography and an evolving food story which reflects both change and continuity. 

Maud and her mother, North Devon, c 1930

 

The resources I have used are a diverse collection of archival materials – cookery books, recipes, photographs, postcards, accounts of travel, interviews, and oral histories. These are complemented by the material culture of Devonshire kitchens and dairies which reflects the physical hard work of Devonshire women, for example, the cream pans, pitchers, and salterns fashioned from distinctive red earthenware which found its way into farmhouses and cottages across the southwest. Much was produced by the Barnstaple potteries and marketed as ‘peasant ware’. 

Having collected oral and written histories, and stories of food in Devon led me to think about the lives of women like Maud and her mother, (c1930). Theirs, and many like them experienced a life of hard work and a strict routine governed by season and managing the household economy. With few (if any) labour saving conveniences, in addition to providing food for the household there were often dairy duties, making clotted cream, butter, and cheese, and rearing poultry for sale at local markets. Feeding a hardworking family and often providing hospitality for visitors in the form of accommodation, and fruit or cream teas as seen in ‘Strawberries at Wear Gifford’ (1912) added to their workload. At harvest time food was taken into the fields which, as a form of rural commensality, showing how a community shared in their labours and were rewarded, and celebrated with food. 

 

Strawberries at Wear Gifford

 

Their hard work in the kitchen shows considerable enterprise and innovation, and represents a long-term economic contribution to the family, and county in the provision of domestic hospitality. 

The cookery books

The evolving story of food in Devon and its regional differentiation owes a great deal to the role of women who, through their cookery and writing, have contributed an important chapter in Devon’s food history. Searching through collections of cookery books prompted a hunt for those written by women and with a focus on Devon. Looking beyond the nostalgic and quaint, these are records of the economic, political, social, and geographical impacts of food, and their text becomes more of a narrative of the time. Selecting examples, spanning the Victorian, Edwardian, and postwar eras, identifies three food writers – housewife and mother, cook, and philanthropist. Reading their books prompted me to question what we know about them and their writing and skills in the kitchen which are a legacy of life at a point in time. However, these books are about more than recipes: they reflect social structures, the perspective of women, tastes in food, diet, lifestyles, Devon’s recipes, and tell us about the role of women in society. 

Mrs Cruwys Sharland’s Ways and Means in a Devonshire Village (1886) is written in the form of ten chapters, each to be read at ‘Mothers’ meetings’. With recipes and advice intended for younger housewives, they were instructed how to manage their homes on little money, and with economical recipes would learn how to prepare  nourishing dishes from simple ingredients, for example Crocky Pie (mostly vegetables and gravy), Teddy Cake (a cake for teatime made from potatoes), and a Wayward Supper using salt fish. They were advised how to feed children, and to care for the breadwinner (wage earner), couched with the nuances of dialect familiar to the intended audience, for example “jam’s a saving of butter where there’s a pack of children to feed”. 

Dr Black’s A Manual of Vegetarian Cookery (1908) with its recipes and menus credited to the cook and manageress, Miss Isobel Densham, is an early example of a ‘hotel’ cookery book (probably Devon’s first) written at the request of patrons of the Dartmoor House, Belstone. It represents a wider trend in the food and health interests of Edwardian Britain, and the middle classes who could afford holidays and health cures in Devon. 

Muriel Goaman’s Judy’s Cookery Book (1947), written for her daughter, explained to her (and her readers) through a conversational text the principles of cookery. Judy learns how to make “the early morning cup of tea”, and to prepare wholesome meals typical of the era, for example roast mutton and baked potatoes, and Apple Charlotte. Muriel Goaman was writing for a postwar generation, but the expectation of Judy’s future responsibilities in cooking and running her home are quite clear.

The research is ongoing, enhanced with references from literature; for example, Beatrice Chase, who, in describing her village neighbours and the seemingly mundane routines of their housework in Through a Dartmoor Window (1915), tells her readers how village homes were managed on limited incomes and emphasises the role of women in supporting the economy of the farms and cottages. More recently, aspects of the domestic and social history of food and household management in Devon, have been documented by Jacqueline Sarsby (2004, 2018) who, through her archival and anthropological research, recorded the lives of twentieth century farming families. Working on this project has deepened my respect for the women who contributed so much to the economy of the region, fed and nourished their families, and visitors to the county, and through their writing have inspired me to find out more about their skills, routines, and traditions.

Tea for haymakers, near Copplestone, Devon c 1933

References

Black, G, 1908, A Manual of Vegetarian Cookery (London: Horace Marshall & Sons) 

Chase, B, 1915 Through A Dartmoor Window (London: Longmans, Green, & Co) 

Cruwys Sharland, E, 1886 (Ways and Means in A Devonshire village (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) 

Goaman, M, 1947, Judy’s Cookery Book (London: Faber and Faber) 

Sarsby, J, 2004, Sweetstone, life on a Devon farm (Totnes: Green Books Ltd) 

Sarsby, J, 2018, A Dartmoor Farmer, his Daughters, and his Diary (Uley, Dursley: The Rotherfield Press)

 

Picture Credits: 

All images: author’s private collection.