Lovecraft Country: The True Horror Story Of Devon County Explained
The history of Lovecraft Country's fictional Devon County in New England is very similar to the true horror story of Devon County in real-life England. However, the exact connection is somewhat hidden and requires a bit of explaining. The story and plot of the show depend a great deal on setting, which is clearly evidenced by the show's title—a reference to Lovecraft's Arkham and other fictional New England locations.
One of the show's most important places is the fictional and very racist Devon County, Massachusetts, which is also featured in Matt Ruff's book of the same name. In both the show and the book, Devon County is an important location because it's a crossroads where the horrors of racism meet the supernatural horrors of literature. Given this importance, it makes sense that its name is infused with a special reference of its own.
In the first episode, "Sundown", George claims that Lovecraft based Arkham—the setting of many of his stories—on real-life Salem, Massachusetts. He then figures out that the town Montrose mentions in his letter is not Arkham, but Ardham, and it's in Devon County. They learn later that Ardham was founded by a mysterious group of settlers around the same time as the county seat, a town called Bideford. Leticia's brother, Marvin, explains that Bideford was named after a town in England where they had one of the last witch trials.
Marvin says that in Bideford, England, they "hung a woman for fornicating with the devil, who appeared to her as a Black man." He goes on to say that the Bideford in Massachusetts was settled by the so-called witch hunters responsible for those witch trials. While this seems like just another reference to the Salem witch trials, it's actually a hidden reference to what happened in the real-life Bideford in Devon County, England.
According to a plaque on the ruins of the Rougemont Castle in Exeter, a city in Devon County, England, "the last people in England to be executed for witchcraft" were from the town of Bideford, and were known as the Devon Witches. One of the so-called Devon Witches, a woman named Temperance Lloyd, was executed in 1682 for having "discourse or familiarity with the devil in the likeness or shape of a black man" according to The Trial of the Bideford Witches, a book by Frank J. Gent. This is the same accusation against the woman that Marvin describes in the show. The real-life Bideford women were not executed in Bideford, however, but in Exeter, and their trial is still referred to as the Bideford witch trial.
With or without this hidden reference to the true horror story of Devon County, the creators of Lovecraft Country do an amazing job at establishing both the racist settings as well as the supernatural settings of the show and manage to create an authentic sense of place that is fundamental to understanding the characters' experiences, both real and supernatural.