Author Roland Grant talks about his book

Author Roland Grant is interviewed about his book Dorset Villages (1980) and focuses on the treatment of farm labourers in the 18th century and shows the villages of Batcombe and Rampisham (pronounced Ransom).

Batcombe is a small village of the Dorset Downs. Nearby a stone pillar known as the Cross-in-Hand or Cross and Hand is listed as an Ancient Monument thought to date back to before the Norman Conquest in 1066. Thomas Hardy descibes the cross in his novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Rampisham is a village in West Dorset. Rampisham Down was home to BBC's World Service Transmitter for Europe from 1939 to 2011.