 Hampson dreamed of teaching and writing when she was six, but due to the depression after World War II, she had to leave her studies at fourteen and begin making blouses for Marks & Spencer's.She left work when she married.She sold her sewing machine for £15 to the neighbour who later encouraged her to publish her first novel

Later, when her marriage broke up, she had to return to work and lived in a mobile home in the village of Cuddington in Mid Cheshire.