Landscape played many roles in Beatrix Cresswell’s life. Left as a young woman by her older siblings to look after their ageing and querulous mother, she sought relief by walking on nearby Haldon Hill or taking long cycle rides through the Devon lanes, mud and snow notwithstanding. Flower-gathering ministered to her sense of beauty and gave opportunities to connect with friends. She delighted in Dartmoor’s wildness and open spaces, which spoke to her refusal to submit to personal or social constraints. Above all, her ruralism expressed deep-seated loyalties formed early in life to the Anglican faith in which she had been raised, to her county and to her beloved clerical father, whose unexpected death affected her profoundly. These unwavering commitments came together in the central project of her life, a remarkably ambitious attempt to visit every one of Devon’s Anglican churches, which took her up hill and down dale across the Devon countryside. For Cresswell, what mattered most about the countryside was that, in her eyes, it was stable and unchanging, guaranteeing continuity in a way she had learnt she could not rely on other aspects of life to provide.