The name Lolly Willows comes from the 1926 novel Lolly Willowes: Or the Loving Huntsman about a gentle eccentric spinster named Laura Willowes who leaves London for a cottage in the country, where she takes long walks, naps in ditches, gathers herbs for her "brews," and becomes familiar with Pan and the woodland faeries. Lolly Willows is that imaginary place where one goes to escape the constraints of the city.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, author of Lolly Willowes, pictured in 1968 with her cat Pericles. She lived in a cottage in Chaldon Village with her partner Valentine Ackland from 1930 to 1969. See: The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society. She wrote eight novels, was a Communist, a lesbian, and a scholar of Tudor Church Music. The novel Lolly Willowes was a best-seller and the first ever selection of the Book of the Month Club in 1926.
