People living in two Oxfordshire villages are bracing themselves for a trickle of sightseers to become a flood in the wake of the BBC TV series Lark Rise to Candleford.

The hamlet of Juniper Hill and the neighbouring village of Cottisford have always had the occasional tourist arriving to look around the locations and buildings associated with Lark Rise author Flora Thompson.

But now that the three books, collectively called Lark Rise to Candleford, depicting rural life in the late 19th century, are on BBC1, local residents are preparing themselves for many more people to make the pilgrimage to the two communities a few miles north of Bicester.

Judith Harvey, who lives with her husband, Malcolm, in Lark Rise Cottage, Juniper Hill, where Mrs Thompson grew up, has put up polite notices asking visitors to respect their privacy and that of other residents.

Mrs Harvey said: "We often get people coming up to our gate and sometimes they knock on our front door wanting to look around.

"We've learned to manage them, but the TV series will encourage more of them.

"We've put up notices asking people not to drive up to our house, as it is on an unadopted road, which is more like a cart track.

"We've also said we don't mind people photographing our house from the gate, but not to come to the door.

"We've put up a similar notice on the village noticeboard pointing out that the TV series was not filmed around here and asking people to respect the privacy of residents."

Tourists seeking out Flora Thompson associations also often call on Ted and Joan Flaxman, who live in the Old School, Cottisford, about a mile from Juniper Hill, and where Mrs Thompson and other children were educated.

Over the years, their home has been much altered and there is now little resemblance to the austere Victorian school it was in Mrs Thompson's day.

The couple have become an authority on the author, and Mr Flaxman takes pre-booked tours from clubs and organisations around the relevant sights.

Several of Mrs Thompson's relatives still live in the area. Among them is a niece, Mrs Violet McGovern, 83, of Hethe. Her mother was May, Flora's younger sister.

Mrs McGovern said: "She moved from the area when I was quite young. I remember Flora's mother, Emma, who was someone who would always help other people."

Another relative is Paul Lane, 59, of Bicester, who is a great nephew of Flora.

Mr Lane said: "I didn't meet Flora, but I remember my father, who died in 2003, telling me that when he was a boy, Flora called at the family home.

"As he was having a bath in a tub in the living room at the time, he leaped out and hid under the table!"

Mrs Thompson, who died in 1947, was the eldest daughter of John and Emma Timms. She was born in a cottage in Juniper Hill, which has since been demolished.

The family moved into The End House, now called Lark Rise Cottage, where Mrs Thompson lived until she was 14. She left to become an assistant at the post office and forge in nearby Fringford.

In 1897, she left Fringford and took various post office jobs, including ones at Grayshott and Yately in Hampshire.

At this time, she met her future husband, John Thompson, who worked at the post office in Aldershot.

After their marriage, they moved to Bournemouth and later Dartmouth and Brixham in Devon. While at Dartmouth, she began dabbling in journalism and published poetry.

She began writing the first volume of the trilogy in Dartmouth, and called it Lark Rise.

She fictionalised all the locations and called herself 'Laura', in what was a thinly-disguised autobiography.

In the books, Juniper Hill became Lark Rise, Fringford was Candleford Green, and Candleford was an amalgam of Bicester, Banbury, Brackley and Buckingham.

Lark Rise was first published in 1939 and is still in print as a Penguin Classic.

Lark Rise to Candleford is broadcast on BBC1 on Sundays, until March 16, from 8pm to 9pm, and stars comedienne Dawn French.