Flora Jane Timms was born in 1876 in Oxfordshire. She later became famous as the writer Flora Thompson. Flora lived Twickenham for a short while around about 1902. She lived in Heathfield (Road) North. Flora’s best known famous works are the three books she wrote based on her own childhood and youth. The books form a trilogy called Lark Rise to Candleford. The first of the three, Lark Rise was published in 1939. The second one Over to Candleford followed in 1941 and the third Candleford Green in 1943.

The Post & Telegraph Office in King Street, Twickenham in about 1903

A vanished world

Flora wrote about the countryside and about nature, and about a rural existence. She called the place in her books ‘Lark Rise’ because of the sky larks that flew over the fields.

During Flora’s childhood the towns and cities were growing and so the world she wrote about was vanishing.