Description

Having recently written a fairly comprehensive history of Dawlish from the time of its earliest inhabitants through to the present day, I had plenty of time to think about the lives of the people who lived in the town in days gone by. I have always enjoyed ‘telling tales’ and loved essay writing at school, so I let my imagination run riot to write a series of short stories set in Dawlish in the dim and distant past. Some of them are based on actual events that took place in the town, but I have also created little adventures as well. These may – or may not – have actually happened.

The question was: how could I link the tales so that they became a book in their own right? After much thought, I devised a way that I could travel back in time and become an eavesdropper on various people’s lives. I wanted to give you, the reader, an insight into how Dawlish might have looked over the centuries and how the townsfolk might have lived their lives. It will help you immerse yourself in the stories if you imagine the characters speaking in a broad Devon brogue. Each story is a snapshot in time and I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.