Monica Mary Scott was born in Cardiff on 3 July 1917, daughter of John Lawlor Scott and Elizabeth (née Mills). In 1927, her family left Cardiff, moving to Warminster in Wiltshire and later to London, where Monica attended a number of schools including Trowbridge High School, Camden School for Girls, and a school in Chard, Somerset.
From 1938 until 1940, Monica lived in Romany Cottage (now known as Keeper’s Cottage) at Silverlake near Sherborne. She was only 21 when she set up home on her own in this remote cottage, supporting herself initially by working at Yeovil cinema selling chocolates and later as a shop assistant at no.54 Cheap Street in Sherborne. Monica later recalled this happy period of her life in her second book Romany Cottage, Silverlake (1946), which she illustrated with her own photographs.
On 30 September 1940, Sherborne was heavily raided by German bombers and Monica, when trying to get from the shop to an air raid shelter in Swan Yard, was forced to lie down in the middle of Cheap Street while buildings crashed down around her. The next day Monica was asked to identify the body of her elderly friend Alberta Gartell who had been killed in her cottage in Lower Newland when it received a direct hit. The trauma of this event led to her leaving Romany Cottage.
Monica married twice, firstly on 24 March 1941 at Yeovil Register Office to Herbert Hutchings (1916-1992), a chemists’ assistant who lived at ‘Royston’ in King’s Road, Sherborne, and secondly in 1951 to Lewis Baber (1909-1986), a dairy farmer of Church Farm, South Barrow, Somerset.
A prolific author, between the 1945 and 1976 Monica wrote numerous books, both fact and fiction, as well as articles for magazines and newspaper, many of which were about her beloved West Country. Monica was friends with the novelist Theodore Powys and his brother Littleton Powys, with whom she shared an interest in animal rights. Her last unpublished book was about a Scottish wild cat which she had befriended.
In 1967, Monica founded with fellow writer Rodney Legg the Tyneham Action Group, which in 1975 secured from the Ministry of Defence partial public access to the village of Tyneham in Dorset.
Rodney Legg later paid tribute to Monica in his book Tyneham: Dorset’s Ghost Village (1992) in which he gave an account of the health problems she suffered in later life, and her death, saying that she ‘had overcome breast cancer, but was losing the wider battle for her health. She could not adjust to failing sight in the mid-1970s and was to swim to her death off Argyll.’
Monica Hutchings died on 15 March 1977 and was buried at Brackley Wood Burial Ground, Carradale, Argyll & Bute, Scotland.
Romany Cottage, Silverlake, near Sherborne, Dorset. (Photograph by Monica Hutchings, Romany Cottage, Silverlake, 1946)
Books written by Monica Hutchings:
The chronicles of Church Farm (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1945)
Romany Cottage, Silverlake; the true story of an ‘ordinary’ adventure (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946). Dedication: ‘To the late Mr John Gort who gave the cottage its name.’
Rural reflections (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1947)
Hundredfold (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948)
Green willow. A novel of the time of Sedgemoor (Dorchester: Longmans, 1951)
The special smile. Essays on life in Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1951)
The walnut tree: an autobiography of kindness (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1951). Dedication: ‘To my two friends Littleton C. Powys & Anthony Essex-Lopresti who have alternately helped and hindered the production of this book – in gratitude and affection.’
The Isle of Wight (London: Hale, 1953)
Dorset river. On a journey up the Stour (London: Macdonald, 1956)
The blue island (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1959)
Blow the wind southerly (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1960)
The heart mender (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1960)
Tamarisk summer (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1961)
Two for joy (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1961)
Highway to dreams (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1962)
The man for Gill (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1962)
The visitors’ brief guide to the Hardy country of Dorset, edited by E.R. Delderfield (Exmouth: The Raleigh Press, 1962)
A thing apart (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1963)
The visitors’ brief guide to Somerset (Mendip and Avalon), edited by E.R. Delderfield (Exmouth: The Rayleigh Press, 1963)
Inside Somerset (Sherborne: Abbey Press, 1963)
Inside Dorset (Sherborne: Abbey Press, 1965)
Against hunting, edited by Patrick Moore (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1965)
A farmer’s wife looks at hunting (Richmond: National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports, 1965)
Hardy’s river (Sherborne: Abbey Press, 1967)
Things to see and do in Somerset (Newton Abbot: The Raleigh Press, 1967)
Things to see and do in Dorset (Newton Abbot: The Raleigh Press, 1967)
Isle of Purbeck (Sherborne: Abbey Press, 1967)
The fight for Tyneham on the Dorset coastal Army ranges (Bournemouth: Dorset Publishing Company on behalf of the Tyneham Action Group, 1969)
Wessex reflections: a selection of articles reprinted from the Western Gazette (Sherborne: Abbey Press, 1972)
Brocky: the story of a sheepdog pup (Sherborne: Abbey Press, 1976)
Rachel Hassall