Cold Comfort Farm characters

Appears from the start

A recently orphaned young woman with a small income, urban tastes, and firm confidence in orderly living. Rather than seek employment, she decides to stay with relatives and chooses the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, where she intends to make herself useful while shaping her surroundings into something more manageable.

Appears from the start

Flora's prosperous London friend and temporary host. A collector and student of brassieres, she offers Flora a comfortable base while Flora considers which branch of her extended family to approach.

Appears from the start

Flora's London cousin and trusted correspondent. Fond of Flora and familiar with her habit of arranging other people's affairs, he remains a link to the polished life she leaves behind for Sussex.

Also known as Aunt Ada Doom

First appears in chapter 2

The elderly Starkadder matriarch, who remains upstairs and rules the farm through fear, obligation, and repeated reference to a disturbing sight from her childhood in the woodshed. The family treats her wishes as final.

First appears in chapter 3

An ancient farm worker who meets Flora on her arrival and introduces her to the neglected routines of Cold Comfort Farm. He tends the livestock with worn equipment and treats hardship and disorder as the natural condition of life.

First appears in chapter 4

Flora's cousin and the emotionally intense mistress of the Starkadder household. She is preoccupied with her handsome son Seth and receives Flora as another claimant upon a family already bound by old resentments.

First appears in chapter 4

Judith's husband, a severe preacher whose Church of the Quivering Brethren emphasizes sin and damnation. His religious mission occupies him more than the practical future of the farm.

First appears in chapter 4

The elder Starkadder son, suspicious of Flora and convinced that outsiders mean to take Cold Comfort Farm from him. He cares deeply about the land and its work, though he expresses that attachment through grievance and hostility.

First appears in chapter 4

Judith's striking younger son, whose chief interests are women and motion pictures rather than agriculture. His beauty and dramatic instincts suggest to Flora that his future may lie far from the farm.

First appears in chapter 4

The Starkadders' dreamy, poetry-loving daughter, who roams the Sussex hills and resists the farm's confinement. She is secretly attached to Richard Hawk-Monitor but assumes the difference in their social worlds makes a future together impossible.

First appears in chapter 5

A young dairy worker at Cold Comfort Farm who is burdened by repeated pregnancies and given no practical information about avoiding another. Flora recognizes her situation as a solvable problem rather than an unavoidable rural fate.

First appears in chapter 6

A forceful Starkadder cousin who lives nearby and regards Elfine as his intended partner. His possessiveness adds another obstacle to Elfine's attachment to Richard Hawk-Monitor.

First appears in chapter 7

A writer staying in the district to pursue a literary theory. He attaches himself to Flora, interprets the countryside through fashionable psychology, and assumes that his attention should interest her more than it does.

First appears in chapter 8

The well-bred young heir whom Elfine meets on the hills. His love for her is sincere, but his family expects him to marry someone able to move confidently within their social circle.