Flora's villages

The popularity of the TV series Lark Rise to Candleford, about turn-of-the-century life in rural North Oxfordshire, has inspired the latest book by local historian Martin Greenwood.

At first his book was to be centred on the so-called Shelswell group of parishes, which included villages familiar to Lark Rise’s author Flora Thompson — Juniper Hill, Cottisford and Fringford.

“I decided to use the television series as a way in,” said Martin, 73. He lives in Fringford, which was Flora's semi-fictional ‘Candleford Green’, the title of the final volume in her trilogy. ‘Lark Rise’ was her birthplace of Juniper Hill.So his book became In Flora’s Footsteps: Daily Life in Lark Rise Country 1876-2009 — 1876 being the year she was born as Flora Timms, the daughter of the local stonemason.

Martin also felt that a social history of the area would be more interesting to fans of Flora’s trilogy and other books than attempting to write another biography. He drew on The World of Flora Thompson, by Oxfordshire historian Christine Bloxham, which was published by Robert Dugdale in 1998 and expanded into The World of Flora Thompson Revisited, produced by Tempus in 2007. The BBC TV series gave Martin not only a hook on which to begin his book, but also the first chapter, in which he unravels the names and locations in the trilogy and those seen on the television screen. He also gives the real-life equivalents to those used by Flora in her thinly-disguised autobiography, Lark Rise to Candleford.

While Flora has couched her trilogy as fiction, it was published as autobiography by Oxford University Press, because OUP did not publish fiction.

Martin added: “I don’t think Flora actually wrote fiction, anyway. She was writing social history and was encouraged to expand on essays on rural life, which she sent to OUP, by Sir Humphrey Milford, the publisher at the time of OUP.”

Martin’s book relates how the ‘big houses’ of the area and their owners influenced village daily life. These are Tusmore Park, Swift’s House at Stoke Lyne and Shelswell House, now demolished.

Just as Martin was concluding his volume, volunteers clearing out rubbish from Fringford village hall discovered a huge silk banner that belonged to the Mansfield Lodge of the Independent Order of Oddfellows (Manchester Unity). The lodge was an early form of working men’s health insurance and the banner has since been donated to a museum in Manchester.

Martin was able to draw on local knowledge and the photo collections of Bill Plumb and Baroness Ann von Maltzahn, who inherited Shelswell Park from her godfather John Dewar Harrison in 1967.

“I was also lucky to have illustraitions painted by Julie Barrett, who lives in Fringford, and is a graphic artist, and also the expertise of Peter Silver, who also lives in the village and is involved in photography,” said Martin.

Although this is his third book on local history, it is a relatively new subject to Martin, who was an accountant for 30 years.On taking early retirement in 1990, he became a schools inspector, and began to appreciate the importance of local history to primary school pupils and their villages. He also became a governor of Fringford primary school.

He began to lecture on local history for evening classes at Bicester Adult Education Centre, at Bicester Community College.

When Penny Smith, head of adult education in Bicester, asked him to do something for the villages, he began a series of historical village walks in the Bicester and Banbury area. His first book, Fringford Through the Ages, was published to mark the Millennium in 2000. Villages of Banburyshire was published in 2006.

He is not sure what his next subject will be. “Perhaps it will be on non-conformity and the churches and chapels in North Oxfordshire.”

* In Flora’s Footsteps is published by Wychwood Press at £9.99.

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