Eight thousand years in the life of an English village (Wessex Tales)

This is Volume 2 of Wessex Tales: Eight thousand years in the life of an English village.WELCOME TO A WORLD in which stories of folklore, adventure, history and historical fiction trace eight thousand years in village life. "Wessex Tales Volume 2" -- this book -- brings you 20 short stories. "Wessex Tales Volume 1" brings you another 20. SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS AGO a track led inland from a landing place on England's Channel coast. Trending northeast across the county of Dorset, this trail travelled on to country farmed by a community that, far in the future, would one day build Stonehenge.

FOR MUCH OF ITS ROUTE this trail--the Wessex Ridgeway--kept to the ridges of hills, but at one point the Ridgeway descended to cross Dorset's River Stour before climbing into hills again.

WHERE THE TRAIL CROSSED the river "was once a busy centre on the most important road in the Kingdom". Evidence of struggles to control this river crossing is still carved into the land. Ramparts of Iron Age hill forts "more important than any others in Wessex" lour over the valley. Three rings of ditch and bank defences etch the crowns of hills. Trails off the ancient Wessex Ridgeway connect them all.

"WESSEX TALES VOLUME 2" presents twenty stories, (the same number as in "Wessex Tales Volume 1" ). Our tales span nearly eight thousand years, from the Stone Age to the aftermath of the First World War.
OUR LAND IS MYSTICAL, magical, sometimes brutal, always down-to-earth. Men and women toil, poach game, reap crops and venture as archers, soldiers, carters, smugglers. Press-ganged labourers dig ramparts for hill forts, or haul stones for Stonehenge.
PRIESTS, SHAMANS, BARDS, adventurers and poets; shepherds, cottars, old wives' cures and shifting fortunes weave their ways through "Wessex Tales".

OUR TALES ARE DRAWN from fiction. However, some are set in the village that, in fact, not fiction, sent a higher proportion of its young men to the early months of the First World War than any other village in the United Kingdom. A century later, the stories of "Wessex Tales" are dedicated to those who bravely left their villages, never to return.