Munnings moved to Exford on Exmoor following the requisitioning by the army of Castle House, Dedham in 1941. He recalls in 'The Finish': '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. For the last two days a benign calm has reigned over the moon. Never do I remember my soul - encased in its earthly body - so respondent to the clear, bright sunlight. Its warm rays shine down on fields, moor, combe and stream ... It is too beautiful. Never have I known so uplifting, so inspiring, so healing an effect of happy, divine light from the blessed sun high above. All day it has shone - pure, silvery, and towards the late afternoon, as the burning orb sank lower, before the end ... each fence and tree on the hill-side caught the light, the glow...

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

This is only something of what the eye sees whilst the never-ceasing music of the running river goes on and on - a background of sound to all the bird-songs. Full and clear, and sweet of yore, those flutings of blackbird and thrush which mingle with all the other sounds. And the scents of evening, of growing grass, pale may-blossom and herbage, fill the air. Each fence, each tree, is gilded with light, and darker grow the fields with coming night. An unconscious couplet!'
(A.J. Munnings, op. cit., p.70)