Clovelly’s Reading Rooms feature in Barefoot on the Cobbles as the location for the initial coroner’s inquest. Although we have no evidence for where the actual inquest took place, several inquests were held in the Reading Rooms at this time.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as compulsory education increased literacy rates, many parishes established Reading Rooms. There were often sponsored or supported by local landowners and the Hamlyns of Clovelly Court were benefactors of Clovelly’s Reading Rooms. The rooms were certainly open by 1884, when a traveller recorded their existence. They gave those who might find the cost of newspapers and books prohibitively expensive an opportunity for self-improvement. The rooms also provided a quiet respite in which to read; a notable contrast to many of the crowded homes of the time. Newspaper reports suggest that various fund-raising events, in aid of the maintenance of the Reading Rooms, were held. The rooms were later used as a bank and doctor’s surgery. They are now a private dwelling.

‘Hesitantly, she walked down the wide, mossy steps to the door of the Reading Rooms. The last of the year’s reddened leaves still clung to the Virginia Creeper that crawled round the windows of the long, low building.’

Barefoot on the Cobbles will be published on 17 November 2018. More information about the novel can be found here. Copies will be available at various events in the weeks following the launch or can be pre-ordered from Blue Poppy Publishing or the author.