A MUSICIAN visiting villages in Britain spared the decimation of the First World War has recorded a song in Dorset.

Darren Hayman toured many of the nation's "thankful villages", recording songs inspired by each unique location.

One such settlement was Langton Herring, a village known for being doubly thankful having lost no men in either the First or the Second World War - one of only 14 in the UK.

The recording made in Langton Herring is 15th out of 18 tracks in Thankful Villages Volume One set to be released on June 3.

It is the first of three volumes, but will be the only one to feature a village from Dorset as Langton Herring was the only one spared in the war that killed more than 700,000 British men.

The remaining 36 villages will appear in subsequent albums.

The term thankful village was coined by Arthur Mee who wrote a set of guidebooks called The King's England in the 1930s.

Mr Herring's songs rarely dwell on the First World War directly, instead using the thankful village concept as a device for randomly selecting small communities.

The songs then explore their history and the changes that have taken place over the ensuing century, on some tracks he interviews locals about their memories.

Sheila Milton, a Chesil Bank parish councillor for Langton Herring, spoke of the changes in village life.

She said: "I was just thinking the other day about how all our children now go to Portesham school.

"Our village hall was once the village school and you look at some of the photographs, the school used to have 20 to 30 pupils.

"People's minds are much more focused on what's happening now rather than the past.

"Last year, we had a commemoration of the First World War and our status as a thankful village but that soon faded.

"People are bombarded with what's going on and they don't really understand the relevance of the past.

"Some of the more folk type singers are pretty good at making the past relevant."

 To find out more about Mr Hayman's project, click here.