The fictional Ulverton is the setting for a dozen accounts of life in the village over three hundred years One of Cromwell's soldiers returns to find his wife remarried and he then promptly disappears a woman in confinement awaits her lover three 18th century carpenters' apprentices impersonate the voice of God and a 1980s TV documentary finds a skeleton of one of Cromwell's soldiers Based on folk tales, myths and oral tradition, the author builds a developing picture of a village and its community and so paints a vivid portrait of the changes and continuations which make up the history of England