She was considered an eccentric by some, eking out a frugal existence on a wild English moor, surviving off the land and exchanging her sketches of the countryside for meals.<\/p>\n
But the first museum exhibition on the life and work of the largely forgotten nature writer and artist Hope Bourne highlights that her views on the environment, recycling, access to the countryside \u2013 even rewilding \u2013 were ahead of her time.<\/p>\n
The exhibition, opening at Somerset Rural Life Museum<\/a> in Glastonbury, asserts that Bourne, who died in 2010 aged 91, should be considered a significant nature writer and environmental champion.<\/p>\n Sara Hudston<\/a>, a co-curator, said: \u201cHope Bourne was one of the 20th century\u2019s greatest nature writers, whose work has been unjustly overlooked. Her ecological awareness, rejection of materialism and close relationship with the natural world are of increasing relevance. She had some very forward-thinking ecological thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n Bourne spent decades recording the landscape, wildlife, history and changing rural traditions of Exmoor. Her writing provided a small and precarious income.<\/p>\n Bourne lived in a caravan in the wilds of Exmoor. Photograph: The Exmoor Society<\/p>\n Hudston said: \u201cShe was incredibly frugal. She reused everything. Lots of her artworks were on the backs of envelopes and shopping lists. She lived very lightly on the earth. She was very concerned even back in the 1970s with saving water.\u201d There may have also been a practical reason \u2013 when she lived in a caravan, she had to carry water there from a hillside spring.<\/p>\n Today rewilding<\/a> is taking place across the world but Bourne was talking about such projects half a century ago. \u201cShe called it the impossible dream and recommended reintroducing brown bears, wolves and lynx,\u201d said Hudston.<\/p>\n One of Bourne\u2019s sketches that features in the exhibition. Photograph: The Exmoor Society<\/p>\n Bourne was also interested in another topic that feels very current \u2013 the right to roam. <\/a>\u201cShe felt people should have free access to Exmoor \u2013 as long as they were on foot or they were on horseback,\u201d Hudston said. \u201cAnd you could camp as long as it wasn\u2019t deleterious to wildlife.<\/p>\n \u201cI think, quite a lot of people saw her as an eccentric local character. One of the things we\u2019ve tried to do in the exhibition is to say what she was really doing was creating the life she needed in order to make the work she wanted to make.<\/p>\n \u201cHer inspiration for her creative work was so tied up with Exmoor but it was a hard place to live, it was no idyll. She said she wouldn\u2019t want people to think she was some kind of back-to-nature idealist. She lived this way because she had to. She always said she had to because of financial reasons but I think she also had to live like that for creative reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the objects on loan for the exhibition are Bourne\u2019s paraffin lamp, Roberts radio, compass, binoculars and Swiss Army knife. There will be displays of her landscape sketches, personal journals and published works.<\/p>\n The exhibition A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor<\/a>, is created in partnership with the Exmoor Society<\/a>, which cares for The Hope L Bourne Collection. It runs from 27 September to 10 January 2026.<\/p>\n Hudston\u2019s book A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor will be published next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She was considered an eccentric by some, eking out a frugal existence on a wild English moor, surviving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-374636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115094488623681828","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}