A WOMAN who survived on £100 a year while living off the land on Exmoor has died at the age of 91.

Hope Bourne, who died on August 22, lived in a caravan on the ruins of a farm near Withypool during the 1970s to 90s.

She left school at the age of 14 and was in her 30s when her mother died leaving her with no income or house.

Using her intimate knowledge of the Exmoor countryside she decided to become self-sufficient by growing her own vegetables and shooting animals like wood pigeon, deer, rabbit and hare.

She made a small income by |helping farmers in the area tend stock and ate a breakfast of meat and vegetables straight from the frying pan.

Hope said she lived off £5 a month, with most of her income spent on cartridges.

In the 1970s, she survived being marooned in her caravan in a 48-hour blizzard.

She also kept a diary, which she used to write articles and books.

In 1963, she wrote Living on Exmoor, a month-by-month look at her activities, filled with her pen and ink drawings.

Five years later, she published A Little History of Exmoor, which looks at Exmoor from prehistoric times to the 20th Century.

Her third and fourth books, Wild Harvest and My Moorland Year are also filled with her experiences and accounts of the changing seasons.

She was born in Oxford and later lived in Devon, where her widowed mother was headmistress at a village school.