Here's an associated programme on at the moment :

Thankful Villages
BBC Radio4

A Thankful or ‘Blessed’ village is a place where every soldier returned alive from World War One. Songwriter Darren Hayman heard about ‘Thankful Villages’ and knew that he had his next album title. He then embarked on a three year odyssey to visit all 54 of them..

Hayman writes a song for every village based on local characters, hidden stories and chance meetings.

There is a bit more about the project on his website
http://hefnet.com