Just think about the radical changes that have occurred in the countryside during the years between Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1887 and Queen Elizabeth's in 2002.

Looking at "then and now" photographs is one of the best and most pleasurable ways of observing these changes, and The Exmoor Century does just that.

On each page you will find a picture of a cottage, bridge, village square or perhaps a farm and juxtaposed will be a current or modern image so you can compare without turning the page.

Then and now photographs

Compare this 1890 Dulverton scene with horse-drawn vehicles and the same street pictured below 100 years later

All the photographs of "then and now" are in black and white making it easier to consider the changes.

The earliest images are full of a bucolic wonder that is totally absent from today's pictures with the ubiquitous motor car, TV aerials and telegraph wires.

Looking at these fantastic and emotive old photos you feel that if you stare for long enough you can hear the bleating sheep and the clip-clop of horses hooves.

The same Dulverton street as above - but now the car dominates

In most of the modern photos there are cars. When they are not actually visible then the harsh white road marking are!

Love them or loath them there is no escaping them these days, and I personally would love to keep this book in the back of my car, rather than on the coffee table, and refer to it when out and about.

Boats, bridges and blacksmiths

Towns and villages are visited alphabetically and there are many pictures of harbours, steam trains and boats as well as churches, pubs, shops and even a section with an outdoor swimming pool. The pool was built at Minehead to Olympic specifications in 1936. It was later sold to Butlins, but was demolished in the 1970s to make way for flats.

Surprisingly, in some instances there are very few noticeable differences in the 100 years time span covered in the book. The actual landscape - the hedges, the trees seem much the same. It is more that the people with their dress and attitude seem a world apart.

Porlock High Street circa1880 the chimneys really catch the eye		Porlock High Street - very different looking now but again dominated by cars and ugly road markings

Glorious thatches

I found that some of my favourite pages in this book featured thatched cottages which you can see have been so lovingly maintained either by private owners or by the National Trust.

Many of them are pubs and inns or some are like Periwinkle Cottage at Selworthy which serves up a lovely Devon cream tea.

We are so lucky in Devon to live in a landscape peppered with so many of these chocolate box pretty character buildings. Will we want photograph of todays modern domestic architecture?


The Exmoor Century is published by:-
Exmoor Books, Halsgrove,
Halsgrove House, Lower Moor Way, Tiverton,
Devon
EX16 6SS.
It is priced at £19.95, and can be ordered from Halsgrove Direct on 01884 243 242, or through local stockists.

Photographs reproduced with the permission of the publishers.