BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

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Lives in a Landscape

Factual: Life Stories

Documentary series telling original stories about real lives in Britain today

Lives in a Landscape: Series 9

Lives in a Landscape: Series 9: Episode 5: Boston's Migrant Workers

Episode 5

Episode 5: Boston's Migrant Workers

Series 9

Boston's Migrant Workers

BBC Radio 4 - Lives in a Landscape, Series 9, Boston's Migrant Workers

Elsecar Park, Barnsley has been both paradise and hell for one man. Alan Dein investigates

Elsecar Park, Barnsley has, for the past four years, been both paradise and hell for its unofficial park keeper Francis McDonald. Alan Dein encounters the lives and stories there.

Alan Dein travels to Elsecar Park, Barnsley.For the past 4 years it has been home to Francis McDonald who both runs the cafe and acts as unofficial park keeper. This was once called 'Elsecar by the sea'. Day trippers from Sheffield and hordes of local children from the pit village would play and swim in its reservoir. There's a wrought iron bandstand, a modern playground and the water still laps against the shore. In the last of the golden autumn sun, with eddies of brown leaves skittering around, it is a place of quiet beauty. 

It seemed like a paradise when McDonald opened the doors on a world he had known since his childhood. But gradually it became a kind of lonely hell. Now this will be his last autumn and the house on the hill will fall silent and shuttered.

Producer: Mark Burman.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Lives in a Landscape

Series 9

Episode 5: Boston's Migrant Workers

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