A Word from the Writer and Director of Lark Rise

Flora Jane Thompson (nee Timms) is best known – perhaps only known – for her trilogy of books centred on life in rural Oxfordshire at the end of the nineteenth century, Lark Rise to Candleford. Flora Thompson’s work was originally published as three separate yet linked narratives: Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941) and Candleford Green (1943). Subsequently, these publications were brought together under the condensed and now familiar title Lark Rise to Candleford.

2026 marks 150 years since Flora’s birth [5th December 1876] in Juniper Hill, a tiny hamlet close to the village of Cottisford in north-east Oxfordshire.

The protagonist of Lark Rise to Candleford, Laura Timmins, grows up in Lark Rise – the fictionalised Juniper Hill, and yearns for Candleford – an amalgamation of nearby Fringford, Banbury, Bicester and Buckingham.

Hammerpuzzle’s work involves taking a stimulus, breaking it open in order to find its heart, before puzzling it back together in a way that distils the story down to its core element. To us, it felt that the absolute heart of Lark Rise to Candleford was Laura’s journey of self-discovery surrounded by rural beauty and the cyclical seasons.

The original book layers narrative: the real life of Flora, the fictionalisation of herself through Laura, and the anecdotal ability to move through time.

Flora writes Lark Rise to Candleford retrospectively, four decades after she departed her family home and pens the story of Laura with knowledge of the future. It is an act of looking back. We wanted to embrace her multi-faceted artistry of storytelling and felt it chimed with our own theatrical style. Each character in this re-telling is both a participant in the story and an observer of it.

A story re-told is a life re-lived. To us, Lark Rise to Candleford is about life, love, loss and memory. It is said that as a person’s earthly existence draws to an end, they have visions of the people and places they have loved; their home, their childhood and key chapters of their story are revisited.

This adaptation is an attempt to capture that moment, as Laura fondly looks back through her life before closing the book.

Every sight, sound and smell remembered has a burning intensity, as if it is being experienced for the first time, and we hope this adaptation ignites memories of your own.

Bryn Holding, Director and Tamsin Kennard, Writer, Composer & Musical Director, Co-Artistic Directors of Hammerpuzzle Theatre Company