Of all the books recounting bygone eras, few are as evocative as Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), originally published as Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943).
Described by Phillip Mallett, introducing the Oxford 2011 edition, as a ‘lightly fictionalised memoir’ of Thompson’s childhood in the poor Oxfordshire hamlet of Juniper Hill during the 1880s, the trilogy offers family historians a detailed portrayal of daily life for our late- Victorian rural ancestors.
A secluded settlement
The author, personified as the book character ‘Laura’, described Juniper Hill (‘Lark Rise’) as a poor hamlet tucked into the north-east corner of Oxfordshire, the surrounding landscape drab fields of brown clay, until spring green shoots ripened into a sea of golden corn.
It comprised some 30 scattered cottages and an inn forming a loose circle surrounded by a track, a network of pathways connecting separate plots or clusters of houses.
The local road intersecting the hamlet led in one direction to the ‘mother village’, Cottisford (re-named Fordlow), 1½ miles away, where Lark Rise residents attended church and school; opposite was the main turnpike road to Oxford, and the market town three miles away where Saturday shopping was done. Lark Rise itself had a small general shop run from the
