She stays indoors nowadays, hidden from public view, driven inside from a world she would hardly recognise, a victim of our mindless ways. She is Flora Thompson, an icon of Liphook, and its Postmistress for thirteen years between 1916 and 1929. Many years later she achieved fame with the publication of her trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford, a fictitious account of her idyllic childhood in Oxfordshire.

She was born Flora Timms on 5 December 1876 in the remote hamlet of Juniper Hill, near Brackley, and went to school in the nearby village of Cottisford. After four years as a clerk in the post-office at Fringford, she moved to Hampshire and became assistant post-mistress at Grayshott. Here she came into contact with two local residents, Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw, who may well have sown in her the first seeds of her own literary career.

She lodged with the post-master, Walter Chapman, and his wife, Emily. Chapman, also the local furniture maker, was cruel and abusive towards his wife, and after two years Flora handed in her notice. This, to Chapman, was the last straw, and soon after her departure he stabbed his wife to death. The court found him guilty but insane.

Flora’s next job was at Aldershot, where she met her future husband John Thompson, another post-office worker, and in due course the couple settled in Bournemouth, remaining there for thirteen years, during which time their first two children were born. Then, in 1916, came the move to Liphook, to the old Post Office in London Road, and two years later the birth of their third child.

Money was always short, and Flora began to write nature articles for The Catholic Fireside, based on her observations in the locality, and in other magazines and papers, culminating in 1939 with a portrait of her childhood neighbour back in Juniper Hill for The Lady. By this time the family had moved to Dartmouth.

It was in 1939 too that Flora’s first great success was published, Lark Rise, the first of a trilogy that was to make her name. Over to Candleford followed in 1941 and Candleford Green two years later, all based on her experiences during childhood and youth. They tell of Mayday celebrations and children’s games, the lives of farm workers and craftsmen, and paint an endearing picture of rural life at the end of the nineteenth century. It was a time when, even in church, there was a strict hierarchy: the Squire and the Parson’s families sat in the chancel, the farmers and their families at the front of the nave and the labourers and cottagers at the back. The three volumes were published together with the title Lark Rise to Candleford in 1945, and remain her best- known work.

Flora died in 1947, and many of her hitherto unpublished writings found their way to the University of Texas. Eventually some of them appeared under the title A Country Calendar and other writings, edited by Margaret Lane.

This included Bog Myrtle and Peat, an anthology of poems written at Liphook, and Heatherly, a previously unknown novel following on from Lark Rise to Candleford, and describing her life at Grayshott, in heathery Hampshire. Her image in bronze, by the sculptor Philip Jackson was presented to the people of Liphook by the Bramshott and Liphook Preservation Society, and placed outside the Sorting Office on the south side of the village in 1981. She was not well treated, and suffered damage on several occasions from mindless vandals, so now she resides in the peace and quiet of Liphook Library, where she was transferred in 1996.

Tom Muckley, March 2006

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

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