Flora Thompson 2
Famous Sons and Daughters No 4: Flora Thompson
Dartmouth has long held a reputation for nurturing creativity, and a blue plaque high on a wall in Above Town is a reminder that the tranquility found here by the novelist Flora Thompson gave her the space to create a unique trilogy that captured a moment in the history of rural England – Lark Rise to Candleford.
The stories of village life centred around the Candleford Post Office have captivated readers for generations, and gained further legions of fans in recent years when they were dramatised for television.
By taking a look at the life of Flora Thompson, it is clear to see that her uniquely detailed description of life in the English countryside at the turn of the last century is drawn entirely from her own experiences, and her writing was almost totally autobiographical, based on her childhood in rural Oxfordshire - a vanished world of agricultural customs and rural culture.
Flora was born on December 5th 1876 in the hamlet of Juniper Hill in North East Oxfordshire, the eldest of six children. Her parents, Albert and Emma Timms, a stonemason and nursemaid, prized education and the children went to school in Cottisford, a small village a mile and a half’s walk from their home.
They were baptised at Cottisford Church. The church played a large part in their lives, and Flora would walk with the family to worship there each Sunday. Flora was close to her brother Edwin and the pair were thought of as odd children, often found looking for wildlife in the surrounding countryside rather than playing with other children.
Boys generally left school at around the age of 12 to work on the farms, the vocation of the majority of the men, but as a craftsman himself, Mr Timms was keen that his children learn a craft or a trade. More often than not girls were expected to work as nursemaids when they left school, but Flora’s family was delighted when she was offered the chance to work in a village Post Office at Fringford.
The Post Office was central to village life, and gave Flora the opportunity to find out all about village affairs. In a larger town, Flora would have needed to pass a Civil Service exam in order to take up her post, which her education wouldn’t have allowed. But in the small community of Fringford, Flora was able to leave school aged 14 and take the job of assistant at the Post Office. She worked there from 1891 until 1897, and lived with Kesia Whitton, the postmistress. She saw the introduction of the new telegraph - a machine to send messages long distances over wires. The messages were very expensive to receive, and often the villagers had to pay to receive bad news!
Flora had the chance to wander the countryside when delivering letters and her interest in the natural world showed when she began her writing.
In 1903, Flora married John Thompson, a sorting clerk at the Post Office in Bournemouth, whom she met while he was temporarily working in Aldershot. When the first of their three children was born, the couple moved to Bournemouth, and Flora began entering writing competitions in the Ladies Companion, a magazine for women with a literary interest.
As a married woman, Flora was not permitted to work! But the prize money she received from her published essays helped towards school fees for her children. In 1916, John transferred to a post in Liphook, in Hampshire. During World War I, Flora once again worked at the Post Office with her husband, and continued writing in her spare time. But tragedy struck in 1916 when her beloved brother Edwin was killed near Ypres.
The family was ready for a change and John, who loved the sea and was originally from the Isle of Wight, jumped at the chance of a promotion to Dartmouth in 1927. Flora was reluctant to move, and put it off as long as possible, but on arriving here wrote of her love for the area and the surrounding countryside.
From her home, The Outlook in Above Town, she could see the whole estuary and the sea beyond. She was a private person who loved to walk by herself in the woods at Dyers Hill and Gallants Bower, although she would also join her family for trips in their boat, which they kept at Lidstone’s Boatyard.
John Thompson was initially not keen on his wife being a professional writer and could not understand her literary ambitions. He thought a woman’s place was in the home raising the children, and he was unhappy about her open support of the suffragette movement. But over time John grew to understand and support Flora, and by the time Lark Rise was published, he was encouraging her writing.
She had a number of essays published in the Ladies Companion, and wrote numerous short stories and poems. Her first published volume was Bog-Myrtle and Peat, a poetry anthology. Lark Rise was published in 1939, followed by Over to Candleford in 1941 and Candleford Green in 1943. The three stories were published as a trilogy in 1945, as Lark Rise To Candleford.
On John’s retirement the couple moved across the river to Brixham, but Flora’s health began to decline after the terrible trauma of losing her son Peter in World War II. Peter was on board the Jedmoor warship when it was lost at sea in 1943. She contracted pneumonia shortly afterwards, which left a legacy of angina. Flora continued to write, although Lark Rise To Candleford was the last work published while she was still alive. A heart attack claimed her life in 1947.
Flora Thompson’s funeral took place just below her Dartmouth home in St Barnabas Church and she is buried in Longcross Cemetery in Dartmouth. A book-shaped memorial, also remembering her son Peter, marks her grave.
For further reading.....
www.bbc.co.uk/larkrise/galleries/life_gallery.shtml
www.johnowensmith.co.uk/flora/devon.htm
Flora Thompson –
The Story of the ‘Lark Rise’ Writer, by Gillian Lindsay
On The Trail Of Flora Thompson, by John Owen Smith
First published September 2009 By the Dart