Flora Thompson's Childhood Garden

Oxfordian Author Gardens Series: Part 1

The golden fields looking southwest towards Oxford town from the stile and footpath of Juniper Hill.

“The human eye loves to rest upon wide expanses of pure colour: the moors in the purple heyday of the heather, miles of green downland, and the sea when it lies calm and blue and boundless, all delight it; but to some none of these, lovely though they all are, can give the same satisfaction of spirit as acres upon acres of golden corn. There is both beauty and bread and the seeds of bread for future generations.”
Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford

Road signs between Juniper Hill and Cottisford.

Part 1: For the first of our visits to Oxfordian author gardens, we will stop at the picturesque landscape and cottage of Flora Thompson, author of Lark Rise to Candleford.

End House: childhood home of Flora Thompson

Location: End House, Juniper Hill, near Cottisford, Oxfordshire

Steady and determined, the wind still blows across the wheat, all the way from Oxford in the south into the open farmland surrounding a group of humble cottages. Flora Thompson (maiden name Timms) grew up surrounded by these fields and the lanes that sidled along them. Her family’s own tiny cottage garden gave them sustenance through many a lean year of hamlet life. 

“Plenty only came once or at most twice a year, and there were all the other days to provide for. How was it done on ten shillings a week?... all vegetables, including potatoes, were home-grown and grown in abundance. The men took great pride in their gardens and allotments and there was always competition amongst them as to who should have the earliest and choicest of each kind. Fat green peas, broad beans as big as a halfpenny, and cabbage and kale, all in their seasons went into the pot with the roly-poly and slip of bacon. Then they ate plenty of green food, all home-grown and freshly pulled; lettuce and radishes and young onions with pearly heads and leaves like fine grass. A few slices of bread and home-made lard, flavored with rosemary, and plenty of green food ‘went down good’ as they used to say” (p 14, Lark Rise to Candleford). 

This homegrown Victorian self-sufficiency would serve Flora well as she weathered two world wars during in her adult life. The abundance and joy of growing things seems to have come back to her in the late 1930’s and early 40’s while she worked in a Devon post office with her husband, John Thompson. Beside the sea and the present danger, she seems to have dreamt of the windy grain fields surrounding her childhood cottage, known as the End House, and perhaps fell asleep thinking of the rush of the wheat instead of the waves.

Fields that come right up to the hamlet of Lark Rise near End House.

Flora Thompson’s cottage, End House, next to Queenie’s cottage at the south edge of the hamlet on Juniper Hill

Fields with cow parsley and other “wild food.”

Farmer’s harvest

Gleaning in the fields after harvest was known in the hamlet as ‘leazing’ and was a job for the women and children each year. It was hard work but Flora said that she loved it: 

“It was pleasant in the fields under the pale blue August sky, with the clover springing green in the stubble and the hedges bright with hips and haws and feathery with traveller’s joy… the children would wander off down the hedgerows gathering crab-apples or sloes, or searching for mushrooms” (p 14-15).

The fields around "Lark Rise" and footpaths leading to St Mary's Church.

Cozy hamlet life

Juniper trees formed a line of wind protection around the cottages and gave the hamlet its name. This tiny hamlet is still just a few small lanes set in a sea of wheat. Flora tells us about their daily lives and antics, as well as their perseverance of spirit in the midst of poverty.

“People were poorer and had not the comforts, amusements, or knowledge we have today; but they were happier.”

Cottages in hamlet of Juniper Hill

Living in the landscape

As a child, Flora inhabited all of the area around the hamlet: the stony footpath that began just outside their front door and led over a stile to Cottisford with its tiny school and honey-colored church; the fields that grew the farmers’ wheat, speckled by wild poppies; the wooded path to Shelswell Manor where her father worked his masonry trade; the short path to the “big road” leading to Banbury and Oxford town; and the longer road that, for Flora, ended in Fringford at the post office. It was the beauty of these nooks and vistas and of the people that sprung up there that prompted Flora to record all that she loved in her trilogy of memoirs which were later collected into one volume in 1945, Lark Rise to Candleford.

“Mere seeing from a distance did not satisfy her; she longed to go alone far into the fields and hear the birds singing, the brooks tinkling, and the wind rustling through the corn, as she had when a child. To smell things and touch things, warm earth and flowers and grasses, and to stand and gaze where no one could see her, drinking it all in.”
Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford

Red poppies just beginning to bloom at the end of June on Juniper Hill in 2017.

Where to find Flora’s book and home:

Paperback edition of Lark Rise to Candleford

Watch the BBC series of Lark Rise to Candleford

Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford book

Planning a walk around Juniper Hill, North Oxfordshire

Have you read the book or watched the BBC series Lark Rise to Candleford? Love to hear!

Oxfordian Author Gardens Series:

Introduction at Oxford Botanic Garden

Part 1: Flora Thompson’s Childhood Garden

Part 2: C.S. Lewis’ Garden at the Kilns

Part 3: J.R.R. Tolkien's Oxford Garden

Part 4: Elizabeth Goudge’s Garden

All photos © Julie Witmer 2017

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