A LONG-lost manuscript by Exmoor’s Hope Bourne was recently discovered by the Exmoor Society.

Dr Helen Blackman, the Society’s archivist, had found a box labelled ‘Village Survey’, which contained the manuscript in little orange folders.

She said: “To be honest I didn’t quite register its significant because I was a few weeks into a new job.” The title of the manuscript refers to Withypool, where Hope lived for many years.

She takes the reader around the village, relating much about the farms and the moorland landscape, as well as local activities and everyday life in the 1960s.

Hope died in 2010, and left all her estate to the society.

The book will be published in the spring of 2015.

Dr Helen Blackman is working fulltime for two years for the society, preserving, ordering, cataloguing, storing and prioritising a wide range of material found in various states of condition.

She estimates that there are over 15,000 items in the archives, and, with the help of volunteers, is preparing for the move to the new archive store at the society’s headquarters in the middle of Dulverton.

The whole archive project is supported by the Exmoor National Park Partnership Fund and other charities.

A spokesman for the society said: “The society has played an important role in the conservation movement and all the archival material provides an insight into the fight undertaken to conserve Exmoor over many decades.”