Pilgrimages

Hello!

I just discovered your web site!!  How wonderful to find a place where Elizabeth Goudge’s works are so appreciated and remembered.  There are several of us in Phoenix Arizona who love Elizabeth Goudge and we meet from time to time to discuss her books.  Is there another convention planned?  How would be go about finding out more about taking an Elizabeth Goudge pilgrimage?  It would be a dream come true for some of us to travel to her home and see many of the places that are the settings of her books.

Thanks for your help and time.

Fondly,

Marcia Kuyper

Dear Marcia,

How wonderful to think of you all reading and appreciating Elizabeth Goudge’s work in Arizona, such a different world from the one she writes about.

The Convention was a great success, and I’m sure there will be others in the future.

There would be several “pilgrimages” you could take if you came over to England. One would be the Oxfordshire one that we did this year taking in Rose Cottage, Henley-On-Thames, Turville where Scent of Water is based, and of cause Oxford itself where she lived for a time when her father was made Professor of Divinity there. Towers In the Mist is set where she lived in Tom Quad.

Or you could go to Hampshire where the Eliot novels are set and visit The Hard, the sea marshes and the church where Elizabeth is buried with her parents in New Milton.

Then again Devon is the county that Elizabeth wrote about most. She lived there with her Mother during the Second World War in Providence Cottage Marldon. Here you could visit not only the village but Compton manor where The Moonacre Manor of The Little White Horse stands, see Smokey’s House in the wooded Westerland valley, and the wonderful vista of Torbay setting for much of Gentian Hill. Pomeroy Castle ruins are also open to the public, the “Castle On The Hill”, reputedly one of the most haunted castles in this land of haunted castles.

Finally there is Ely set in the Cambridgeshire fens her “home of homes”

All these tours can be found in Sylvia Gower’s book “The World Of Elizabeth Goudge.”