How Britain’s other great Southwestern county maintains its own distinct, gently competitive comic identity

Devon shares a border, a coastline and a considerable regional rivalry with Cornwall, covered elsewhere in this series, but maintains its own distinct comic identity worth examining separately, built substantially around one of Britain’s more seriously contested culinary questions. This piece surveys the territory, building on this paper’s wider English Humour coverage.

The cream tea order, defended to the last

Devon’s insistence that cream goes on the scone before jam, directly opposing the Cornish method, forms the county’s single most defended and most joked-about position, a dispute this paper’s coverage treats with exactly the mock-gravity locals themselves apply, since neither side shows the faintest sign of budging after generations of argument.

Life beyond the cream dispute

Devon’s own comic identity extends well past the scone question into a broader, generally relaxed rural humour, shaped by the county’s mix of coastal towns, Dartmoor’s isolated communities and a pace of life this paper’s regional correspondents consistently describe as noticeably unhurried compared with more urban parts of the country.

Dartmoor as its own comic universe

The moor’s isolation, weather and occasional genuine hazards have generated a specific strand of local humour built around visitors’ underestimation of the terrain, this paper’s coverage inventing an unfortunate walker rescued repeatedly from the same stretch of moorland, a running joke built, as ever, on a genuine and widely reported real pattern.

Devon versus Cornwall, from the other side

Where Cornwall treats the Tamar as a near-national border, Devon’s side of the rivalry tends toward a slightly more amused, less existentially invested tone, this paper’s coverage suggesting the county holds its identity with rather less anxious defensiveness than its immediate neighbour, secure enough not to need the border quite as badly.

Naval heritage as a further comic thread

Devon’s significant naval history, particularly around Plymouth, adds a further layer distinct from Cornwall’s more fishing-oriented coastal identity, this paper’s coverage noting the two counties’ related but genuinely different relationships with the sea provide plenty of material without either side needing to borrow from the other.

A closing thought

This paper’s overall assessment is that Devon’s comic identity, quieter and less urgently defended than Cornwall’s, reflects a county confident enough in its own considerable charms that it can afford to treat even its most passionately held culinary position with a slightly lighter touch than the rivalry’s reputation might suggest.

The English Riviera claim

Parts of Devon’s coastline market themselves as the English Riviera, a term this paper’s coverage treats with the same gently amused scepticism it applies to any self-appointed regional superlative, since a comparison to the Mediterranean original invites exactly the kind of good-natured mockery this paper’s regional desk finds impossible to resist, however genuinely pleasant the coastline in question actually is.

A note on the county’s culinary confidence beyond cream

Beyond the scone dispute, Devon maintains genuine pride in its dairy heritage more broadly, this paper’s coverage noting that the county’s cream itself, rather than merely its placement, forms a considerable part of local identity, a point Devon residents raise with some regularity whenever the Cornish rivalry threatens to reduce the entire dispute to a single question of order alone.

A final observation from the archive

Marjorie notes that Devon-related correspondence to this paper has, across several decades, focused almost exclusively on the cream-versus-jam question, with remarkably little attention paid to any other aspect of the county’s identity, a narrowness of focus she finds oddly touching, suggesting the dispute matters to Devon readers rather more than any other single subject this paper covers regionally.

A last thought on neighbourly love

For all the mock hostility, this paper’s regional desk notes that Devon and Cornwall residents regularly holiday in each other’s territory, marry across the county line and generally get along rather better than the scone dispute alone would suggest, evidence, per this paper’s wider coverage of regional rivalry, that the fiercest jokes are usually reserved for the neighbours people actually like best. Some rivalries, this paper concludes, are simply love wearing a slightly stubborn disguise.