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Ted Hughes' funeral service was held on 3rd November 1998 at St. Peter's Church, North Tawton, Devon.
His body was subsequently cremated in Exeter with only his close family in
attendance. (See map...ref no. 3)
Ted Hughes Memorial Stone
His ashes were scattered at a remote location on Dartmoor, close to
the source of the River Taw. A large granite stone bearing his name was laid near
the spot. At the
church service fellow poet Seamus Heaney read two of Hughes' own poems and Do Not Go Gentle
Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas.
In December 2011 Hughes was honoured with a memorial stone in Poets'
Corner, Westminster Abbey, London. The slab of kirkstone green slate,
designed by the Devon stonemason Ronald Parsons, was set below that of
T.S. Eliot and bore the words 'So we found the
end of our journey./So we stood, alive in the river of light/Among the
creatures of light, creatures of light.'
In 1961 Hughes and his wife Sylvia Plath
moved to Court Green, North Tawton in Devon. The marriage was an unhappy one ending with
Plath's suicide in 1963. In 1969 Hughes' relationship
with Assia Wevill also ended in tragedy when she killed herself and
their 4 year old daughter, Shura. His bleak collection Crow
(1970) is dedicated to Assia and Shura. Hughes continued to live in Devon
following his second marriage to Carole Orchard in 1970. For
a number of years he worked as a farmer
on her father's farm - experiences which he recorded in Moortown.
Ted Hughes
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