Pride of Place

http://www.greysgreengolf.co.uk

I have just been down Dog lane looking for Rose cottage- and it can hardly be seen from the lane.  A garage seems to have been built on the front garden.  The golf course is immediately the other side of dog lane.  I wonder what Goudge would have made of it?

I do think it sad that Devon websites can acknowledge Elizabeth Goudge’s having lived at Providence Cottage and Oxfordshire doesn’t know about Rose Cottage.  If I lived in a house previously belonging to someone like Elizabeth Goudge, I would be proud of it, not try to hide.

When I saw it in the summer there was a big hedge all round it – but it did look as if there was still plenty of land at the back of it.

C.S. Lewis’s house -the Kilns-and its land, in Oxford, was sold off by his brother and Maureen Moore, and internally altered by 1970’s owners but is now restored by an American society.  I think it has recently got a Blue Plaque.  Perhaps something like that might happen to one of Elizabeth Goudge’s cottages

I saw somewhere that a film is being made of the Little White Horse- so there may be more interest than ever in Elizabeth Goudge.  When I was a child I enjoyed equally The Valley of Song.  I do some part time online bookselling now, and – of second hand books, – and occasionally benefit from the fact that publishers are too silly to reprint it. – Copies are quite rare.

Lorna Logan