Simon Evans (writer)

Simon Evans (10 August 1895 – 9 August 1940), a postman with the GPO (now Royal Mail) for much of his short life, also developed a reputation in the 1930s as a writer and broadcaster on country life, particularly in and around rural South Shropshire. He had five books published by Heath Cranton Ltd within a seven-year span (1931–38) before his death in 1940. In recent years a collection of his writings has been published, and other memorials created, including plaques in Cleobury Mortimer, where he lived for 14 years, and a 28-km walk based on his postal round stretching from Cleobury Mortimer deep into the South Shropshire countryside.

Early life

Simon Evans was born at Tyn-y-Fedw, a farm between the villages of Pen-y-Bont-Fawr and Hirnant in Montgomeryshire, Wales, not far from Lake Vyrnwy, a reservoir supplying water to Liverpool. His father, Ellis Evans, was a farmer, but the family farm was too poor to support a growing number of sons, so Ellis and his family left Wales for Birkenhead on Merseyside around 1907. Simon, tall for his age, and speaking with a strong Welsh accent, did not have an easy time at school, but did owe his love of literature to an influential teacher. When he left school, he worked for the General Post Office as a messenger boy and postman.

War service

On the outbreak of the First World War, Evans joined the 16th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, and was ultimately promoted Sergeant by age 20. He spent much of the next five years in trench warfare, an experience which left him mentally and physically scarred. He was wounded and invalided back to England at least once, and finally wounded in both legs and gassed in the summer of 1918. Although he regained use of his legs, resisting advice to have them amputated, his chest was left permanently damaged.Part of special report on World War I in Shropshire. Title refers to a beer brewed by Hobson's brewery of Cleobury Mortimer, called "Postman's Knock".

Life after WWI

Evans returned to Merseyside after an operation on his wounded legs, but found himself unable to settle down to the life of an urban postman. Gas damage to his lungs meant he still had to spend time in convalescent homes, and on one occasion was advised to take a walking holiday before returning to his work as a postman. This holiday he took in or near Cleobury Mortimer, and there he found a postman willing to exchange a rural postal round for Simon's urban one. With some difficulty, an exchange was arranged, and Evans took up work in Cleobury Mortimer in 1926.

Cleobury Mortimer

His new life in Cleobury Mortimer suited him perfectly. He later claimed that as a country postman he knew many more people than he had known when working in a town. At the time, the GPO provided rural walking postmen with shelter huts at the further point of their rounds, and Evans took full advantage of his, turning it into a place where he could read, write, and even spend the nights when off duty. In 1928, he won a scholarship offered by the Union of Post Office Workers to enroll on a correspondence course in English at Ruskin College, Oxford. This was to prove a turning point in his career, as it opened the door to literature, and led to his becoming a published writer and a broadcaster.

Evans' settling in Cleobury created a new focus for his family, and he was later joined by his mother and several siblings, probably after the death of his father. However, no descendants of this family now reside in the town.

Literary work

Starting as a writer of short articles, largely about rural life as experienced by a country postman, Evans soon caught the attention of the BBC
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