Almost two years ago, a visit to the beautiful village of Cockington in Devon, with its old forge and thatched cottages, made me wonder what it would be like to live in a place thatseemed to belong to another time. The idea for my new series, set in a living history village, was born. Weeks later, thinking about its residents, I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like if the village was also populated by ghosts!
I’ve always loved museums, and several of them proved to be inspirational when I was creating Rowan Vale, the setting for Kindred Spirits at Harling Hall.
York Castle Museum has the most amazing exhibitions, including a Victorian street called Kirkgate, and another called The Sixties, which inspired me so much that I included my own versions in the book.
Last summer, I made a research trip to the Ryedale Folk Museum in Hutton-le-Hole in North Yorkshire. It’s a six-acre open-air museum, with twenty heritage buildings, a witch’s hovel, and a model village. More inspiration!
The wonderful Streetlife Museum in Hull has a 1940s street, an amazing collection of vintage vehicles, and a railway signal box and crossing. You can clamber aboard the trams and buses and explore them to your heart’s content. I decided Rowan Vale needed vintage buses to transport its residents and tourists. Meanwhile, one of my favourite films, The Titfield Thunderbolt, inspired me to include a heritage railway line.
I had plenty of ideas for my village, but where to set it? Having watched lots of YouTube videos of Cotswolds villages, I was drawn to that region. I had an idea which village was most suitable for Rowan Vale, and a trip to Lower Slaughter last September confirmed that I’d found my perfect location.
With its old mill, village green, gentle river, stunning church, and beautiful honey–gold buildings, it was perfect. Naturally, I had to take a few liberties, adding some extra buildings and making the green much larger — as well as populating the place with ghosts!
My decision to base Rowan Vale there was confirmed when, not far from our hotel, we unexpectedly discovered a group of standing stones and a stone-age barrow, just as I’d written about in my book outline.
I’d created my own stories around Rowan Vale’s Wyrd Stones, but the Rollright Stones have a similar mythology. It’s almost as if it was meant to be…
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