This eloquent and finely observed social history charts the lives of a rural population whose horizons were defined by the Hampshire and Wiltshire countryside between Salisbury, Romsey and Fordingbridge. Their unassuming stories of joy and celebration, mingled with sadness and poverty, are told with great insight and sympathy, and make a significant contribution to our understanding of the Victorian and Edwardian world so wholly removed from our own. It is a profoundly moving and sensitive account, expertly told in the finest tradition of English country writing.