Brightworthy Fords, Withypool, Exmoor

Munnings moved to Exford on Exmoor following the requisitioning by the army of Castle House, Dedham in 1941. He recalls the beauty of the landscape in his autobiography, The Finish (1952): 'Brightworthy - evening. Rich, superb, beautiful and calm, the evening of 2nd June 1942. After the cold weather with incessant, monsoon-like storms of wind and rain, a complete change has taken place... The fresh, green hedgerow trees were each fringed with bright, gleaming, fan-like edge - so delicate! Here and there a knoll or swell in the ground had edges of pale golden light - all the lower ground in cool, rich shadow. Those dainty fringes of fence and trees sang out yet brighter and more detached in a sort of scenic splendour for the last moments of the sun's rays, whilst above ran the long, dark, calm, curving line of the hill, broken only by Brightworthy Barrow, small as a molehill. Over the hill the sky itself made an intense and yet more intense line of light' (A.J. Munnings, op. cit., p.70)