Jane Egginton was born and raised in Somerset and as a teenager she couldn’t wait to get out.
She moved to the capital aged 18 to study and was beyond thrilled. “I can remember walking down the street and thinking: “If I die tomorrow it doesn’t matter because I’ve made it to London”.”
In the early 2000s Jane was able to buy a three storey Victorian house in Lower Clapton, and rise the wave of the great Hackney revival. She loved the vibrancy, excitement, and multiculturalism of the place, Hackney Marshes was up the road for green space, and new shops and restaurants were popping up all the time.
Then, about five years ago, things began to change. Jane, a travel writer and healer simply started to fall out of love with London life.
“It was like the end of a relationship,” she said. “It was the noise and the vibration of the place — which had attracted me when I came to London — that I had had enough of.”
Jane decided she wanted to decamp back to Somerset, although she had no idea when. “I literally stuck a pin in a map,” she said.
The pin landed on the village of Wedmore, some 20 miles south west of Bristol. Worried that she might not like Somerset life Jane decided to keep, and rent out, her London house and use the money to rent a place. In December 2023 a three-bedroom Elizabethan cottage came up and she leaped at the chance.
Moving down Jane, 56, wasn’t sure what the locals would make of her — but her fears proved completely groundless.
“Everyone has been so kind and welcoming that it almost made me want to cry,” she said. “I went to a yoga session and when it ended the woman on the mat next to me told me her name and asked if I wanted to go for coffee, because the class used to do that. That wouldn’t happen in London.”
There is also plenty to do near Wedmore. Jane’s craving for nature can be sated with visits to Brean Beach or Avalon Marshes. Bristol, Glastonbury, and Wells are all nearby, and she is helping organise the annual Wedmore arts festival.
She travels to London a couple of times a month for work, which means she still gets her city fix.
“It is different in the country,” she said. “In Hackney you can go out in your pyjamas and nobody will look twice. On the other hand people here will smile at you and say hello, and if you do that in London they think you are mad.”
