The Story of The Deer Park - A Modern Fairy Tale

Since the soft launch of my little yarn entitled The Deer Park this week, loads of people have been asking me on social media how a cynical old newspaper journalist came to write a children’s fairytale. 

The answer is quite simple… I loved such stories when I was a kid and the magical woodlands above Dunster sort of remind me of some of those old Grimm’s Fairy Tales. My daughter Nancy, her partner Ross and their lovely Exmoor lurcher Tadgh live near Gallox Bridge (the old packhorse bridge) so we often join them for a walk up into Dunster Deer Park. One day just before the Covid lockdown last winter we were up there as a gale was beginning to blow in from the Atlantic - and the views from wonderful Bat’s Castle always look particularly dramatic in such circumstances. 

Gallox Bridge

As we walked down over the hill through the forests, I heard a strange banging noise in the woods and wondered what it was… We soon discovered a big larch tree which had half-fallen over but which had come to rest at a 45 degree angle in the branches of a neighbouring oak - the wind was causing the upper branches of the two trees to smack into one another - and, because the banging sounded a bit like some kind of morse-code message, I began to formulate a story in my mind. 

Dunster Castle

What if that sound was actually being generated by some kind of woodland spirit? And what if it was heard by some children or a child, lost in the woods as the storm approached. And what if there was another threat - my mum used to tell me about the German aeroplanes which would fly low over the West Somerset hills on their way to bomb either Cardiff or the steel works in South Wales.  

Her reminiscences of those times always centred on the loss of her china-faced doll, which was the only bomb victim to ever come to grief in the village of Stogumber. Apparently the bombers would sometimes escape British fighters by skimming low over the Bristol Channel when they’d finished their raids - and sometimes one of the aeroplanes would have been unable to release all of its bombs, so the pilots suddenly needed to jettison these fast in order to climb over the 1400 foot escarpment of the Brendon Hills. I know of more than half a dozen bomb craters which were created in this way in the Monksilver and Nettlecombe area and in my own valley above Roadwater. My mums doll was shaken from its perch on a chest of drawers when a bomb blew up in fields just outside of Stogumber and it fell, smashing its little china face. Not a bad death toll when compared of those place which lost so many poor souls…

Dunster Church

Anyway, all these stories began to swirl around in my mind as I thought about how a modern fairy tale could be developed. There are also a great many legends based in and around Dunster, which of course is one of the most historic villages in the South West region. For example, I seem to remember reporting a story for the newspaper once after archaeologists had found the skeleton of an exceptionally large man in buried under some of the nether regions of Dunster Castle. He had died centres ago in the days when people were a good deal shorter than they are now. I think this guy was something like seven feet tall - so he really must have been regarded as a giant back in the day. Which tied in, because I have another memory of being told about a legend centred upon a giant living at Dunster. The story went that he was so big he kept knocking into things around the village - they they banned him from the place and made him live just outside up on Grabbist where I believe there is a place called The Giant’s Seat. The bit in this legend that sticks in my memory was that the villagers were kind to him and brought him food - so he was kind to them and would do favours around the place. Like, for example, blowing down from his high seat at the washing on washing-day when there wasn’t enough wind to dry the clothes. A tall order for someone who is only seven feet tall - but a good yarn nevertheless. 

Dunster main street from the castle roof

So you can see, there was plenty of material to be thinking about when the Covid lockdown kicked in and I had time on my hands at home…

To be continued…

Copies of the Deer Park are available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deer-Park-Modern-Fairytale-ebook/dp/B09MG4RGK4/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=martin+hesp&qid=1638270958&qsid=261-9964086-6600138&s=digital-text&sr=1-7&sres=B088WX85PB%2CB006KDAYZC%2CB00577PNQC%2CB005G82AH2%2CB005UAKHBM%2CB0887D9Y6J%2CB09MG4RGK4