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Country Planning
A STUDY OF
RURAL PROBLEMS
BY
THE AGRICULTURAL
ECONOMICS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
OXFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse,
The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fal.
Here is non hoom, here nis but wildernesse:
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stall
Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al ;
Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede:
And trouthe shall delivere, hit is no drede.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
FIRST PUBLISHED 1944
REPRINTED 1945
Printed in Great Britain and published by
THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Amen House, ..4
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO
MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS
HUMPHREY MILFORD Publish* to the University
PREFACE
FROM the moment of the mobilization of the nation for
another world war it was certain that far-reaching changes
in the social and economic life of the nation would be entailed,
many of which would not pass away with final victory. Even
if the worst fears about the duration of hostilities were not
realized, it was clear that much of the old order would be
destroyed ; that alongside the planning of war strategy must go
the replanning of civil life, if the fruits of victory were not to
prove bitter in the mouths of demobilized members of the
fighting services and of emancipated war- workers.
In none of the country's major activities was the need for
reconstruction likely to be greater than in rural industry.
Economic and social progress in country life and labour,
measured by standards generally accepted, had lagged far
behind that in the other great industries in which people
engage. Both in his purchasing power and in the physical
and social conditions of his life housing, the public services,
education, leisure and the opportunities for using it the
countryman was at a disadvantage with almost any urban
dweller. Even if employment in agriculture were steadier
than in other great industries, this was offset by the absence,
almost complete, of opportunities in it for advancement.
The consequences were inevitable: on every occasion during
the past two generations when alternatives offered migra-
tion overseas, at one time, when home industry was depressed ;
migration into the towns, at others, when it was active the
best of the rural workers were quick to seize them. During
the past sixty years the number of land workers has been
reduced by one-half, following the decline of arable farming
and the increasing use of machinery ; and always, it may be
assumed, it is the more vigorous and enterprising who have
gone, for there has been little or nothing in the circumstances
of their lives to encourage them to stay in rural employment. 1
1 A small group of farm workers in an Oxfordshire village, who had
applied to the W.E.A. for some winter courses, declined the offer of one
iv PREFACE
It was not the farmer's son who endeavoured to leave the
land, for he had prospects; it was his hired man, and an
industry which cannot offer a life 2nd a living which satisfy
the greater number of the workers engaged in it can never
flourish. Any replanning of rural industry, therefore, would
have to be concerned as much with the social side of
country life as with the technical problems of food pro-
duction and marketing. If plans for reconstruction were
to have a sound and sufficient basis, it would be necessary
to have information which would throw light upon every
phase and condition of rural life and labour, social as well as
economic.
Thus the survey, the findings of which are recorded in the
following pages, came to be planned; it was to be a 'pilot'
or experimental survey, designed to test the method and the
scope of an inquiry which would provide a basis for country
planning. Arrangements had been made at the Agricultural
Economics Research Institute, Oxford, early in 1941, for a
survey of this kind to be carried out in a considerable district
in Berkshire, but they had to be abandoned for reasons which
are irrelevant, and it was not until two years later that work
could be begun, on a smaller scale, in an adjoining county.
About half of the research staff of the Institute were then
engaged on other national work, but with the help of a grant
made by the Development Commissioners it was possible to
enlist the assistance of a small number of outside investi-
gators, each of them with particular qualifications for the
work undertaken. It was a condition of the grant that the
survey should be finished and a report presented within a
prescribed period. This limited the scope of the inquiry and
the degree of detail, while war-time conditions, particularly
transport difficulties and the handicap of the black-out as the
days grew short, have also affected the work, which was begun
and finished in the last six months of the year 1943.
on land problems, saying that nothing ever had been done to improve the
conditions of life for rural labour, that nothing was likely to be done, and
that all that they could do was to see to it that their sons should not follow
in their footsteps.
PREFACE v
The following composed the Survey team :
From the Agricultural Economics Research Institute:
C. S. Orwin, M.A., D.Litt. Director of Survey and Editor
of Report.
R. N. Dixey, M.A. Agriculture.
R. W. James, M.A. Education.
R. S. G. Rutherford, M.A. Population and Standards of
Living.
H. A. Beecham, B.A. Health Services, Local In-
dustries, Retail Trade, &c.
From other organizations, or individual investigators:
G. R. Clarke, B.Sc.,) G u , r D ,
jyj A School or Rural Economy.
B. Ackroyd, B.Sc. I Soils in relation to A ^iculture.
B. Sutton, F.R.I.B.A. Housing and Public Services.
S. G. Burden, M.A. Oxfordshire Garden Produce Com-
mittee.
Local Government, the Churches,
and Endowed Charities.
A. F. C. Bourdillon, \ Nuffield College Social Reconstruc-
M.A. (Mrs. Baber) tion Survey.
Y. Smythies, B.A. / Social Organizations.
L. W. Wood Oxfordshire Education Committee.
Youth Services.
A. H. Griffiths Oxfordshire Rural Community Coun-
cil.
Rural Industries.
M. Talbot School of Rural Economy.
Maps, &c.
C. S. Orwin, M.A.
(Mrs.) Photographs.
The Survey team has been, also, the committee in charge
of the work, and it has met from time to time to discuss the
vi PREFACE
various questions which arose. Each member, or group of
members, of the team was responsible for that part of the
survey entrusted to him or them, but there has been general
collaboration in most of the work.
Much help has been given. The Ministry of Agriculture
have permitted access to some unpublished data, and local
organizations, professional and social, have placed their
intimate knowledge of the Survey area in particular aspects
at the disposal of the team. Many individuals, too, have
responded freely to requests for information, and it is im-
possible to mention by name all the Local Government
officials, the clergy, school teachers, professional and business
people, and the inhabitants of the Survey area of every order,
to whom the team is indebted. To each and all of them
grateful acknowledgements are offered, particularly to Mr.
T. O. Willson, C.B.E., M.A., Director of Education, and
to Dr. H. C. Jennings, M.B., B.S., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.,
County and School Medical Officer, both of the Oxfordshire
County Council.
In conclusion, the members of the Agricultural Economics
Research Institute desire to record their great obligation to
the Development Commissioners, both for their most gene-
rous financial assistance, without which the Survey could not
have been organized on the scale desired, and for the en-
couragement which this practical expression of their interest
has given.
C. S. ORWIN,
Director.
AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS
RESEARCH INSTITUTE,
OXFORD,
May, 1944.
CONTENTS
I. THE PROBLEM i
II. THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT ... 9
III. FARMS AND FARMING ... 25
IV. FARM RECONSTRUCTION ... 46
V. RURAL INDUSTRIES .... 85
VI. RURAL ADMINISTRATION ... 89
VII. HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES . 108
VIII. EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE . 140
IX. HEALTH SERVICES . . . . 177
X. RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS . .188
XL ENDOWED CHARITIES . . .204
XII. SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 212
XIII. SUMMARY AND DIGEST . . -237
XIV. 'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?* . 270
INDEX ...... 285
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
IN country planning the interests of the countryman must
be the first concern, and any attempt to reconstruct the
country-side will fail if it does not take into account all the
circumstances of his life. The planner's task is not done
when the Office of Works has scheduled a row of old houses
as an ancient monument, for this does not touch the general
housing problem ; nor when the local authority has prepared
a housing scheme for a rural district, for this may serve the
needs of a section only of the community; nor when the
County War Agricultural Executive Committee has made
a survey of farms to discover the inefficient amongst land-
lords and farmers and has provided them with advice and
assistance, for the root of the trouble may lie in the unsuita-
bility of estates, of farms, or of fields, as they are defined
at present, for modern estate or farm management. Planning
calls for a review of these and of many other matters, such
as local government, transport, education, public utilities,
health services, sport, recreation, and the rest. The English
country-side affords the best of all settings for life and labour,
and the problem of its planning and reconstruction is how
to put within reach of the country dweller all the decencies,
the amenities, and the opportunities of life, which are re-
garded nowadays as the normal inheritance of every towns-
man.
It is a hard fact that rural England, notwithstanding all
its variety and beauty and the opportunities which it affords
for employment in sunshine and fresh air such as few indus-
trial workers know, lags far behind any well-administered
industrial area in all that it can offer alike in economic
advancement, in creature comforts, and in social amenities
for its dwellers. Living conditions in any beautiful village
compare most unfavourably with those on any municipal
housing estate. Houses themselves are too often damp, dark,
ill ventilated, and ill found. Piped water is almost unknown
B
* THE PROBLEM
in most cottages, and in hundreds of villages there are no
supplies even to stand-pipes in the streets. It follows, of
course, that internal sanitation and arrangements for sewage
disposal are equally rare. Slops are emptied in the garden,
baths are non-existent, and the outside privy-vault is uni-
versal. The same unfavourable contrast may be made in
other public services gas, electricity, scavenging, &c.
In economic opportunity, too, the country dweller finds
himself in many ways at a disadvantage. His children may
suffer from the handicap of inferior education. The one-
room school, in which children of all ages from 3 to n are
instructed by one schoolmistress and perhaps a pupil-
teacher, is still to be found, and no amount of devotion on
their part can overcome the difficulties of teaching in such
conditions. Senior schools for older children involve journeys
by road or rail, with attendant drawbacks which are accen-
tuated for any who may be selected to proceed to higher
education all of them unknown to most children of any age
from urban homes.
For the adolescent the comparison is still disadvantageous.
Agriculture is the main outlet for the boys, and almost the
only one in many places since the decline of the purely rural
industries and the tendency towards centralization in most
of the others. In agriculture there is no apprenticeship, no
recognized need for systematic training. The boy drifts into
it because there is little else to do, with a determination on
his own part, veiy often fortified and reinforced by the advice
and encouragement of his parents, to get out of it directly he
is old enough to leave home and fend for himself. The girls
are in no better case. Only rarely and in certain country
districts does some local industry offer employment to girls
and young women near their homes, and most of them, after
short spells of housework in farm-houses, vicarages, &c.,
move away to the towns, where domestic service can be
followed under easier conditions with better pay, and where
many alternatives to it are on offer in shops and factories.
For adult workers employment in the country, except on
the land, is limited. Public services, such as the county
THE PROBLEM 3
police, the highways, the Post Office, and the railways recruit
a few, while local tradesmen, small builders, quarry owners,
blacksmiths, and the like create a small labour market. Many
local industries which still carried on fairly generally within
living memory corn-mills, both wind and water, tanneries,
makings, rope-walks, wheelwrights' work, harness and
saddlery, boot and shoe making, tailoring, and so forth
have vanished from most country places. Here and there
some woodland industries remain, but, other than the small
demand just mentioned, no alternative to farm work is to
be found in most districts except by emigration from the
rural environment.
As to farming itself, the position is peculiar, and the evolu-
tion of it, as a way of life and living for master and man, is
important. It is just a hundred years since the agitation for
the repeal of the Corn Laws reached its height, and Peers
Government was shortly to take the step which did more,
probably, to determine the economic future of the nation
than any other measure in its history. Until that time the
domination of national affairs by the landed classes had never
effectively been challenged, and while this is not to say that,
as a consequence, the rural community as a whole was pros-
perous, it may be doubted whether anything approaching
the differences in the circumstances of life in town and
country as they are disclosed to-day were then to be seen.
On the contrary, contemporary writers both of history and
of fiction give pictures of the social life of the times which
suggest that differences, such as there were, favoured the
rural worker. Mass poverty was general, of course, amongst
all the working classes, social legislation still in its infancy,
the study of public health and hygiene not yet begun,
workers' associations to secure better conditions still partially
under the ban of the law. In so far, however, as the country-
man's life was lived in the open air instead of in factory or
pit, his work was healthier, and the land afforded oppor-
tunities for subsidizing a sweated wage. Further, there can
be no doubt that the village community derived something
from a certain sense of responsibility for it manifest in the
4 THE PROBLEM
employer classes, which rarely had any parallel in the life of
the industrial towns. It was patronage at the best, of course,
pauperization at the worst, and inadequate, uncertain, and
capricious at all times. But the almshouses for the aged, the
endowed parochial charities, the Qhistmas distributions
from the big house, even the Lady Bountiful with her broth
and petticoats for sick and needy all of these made their
contributions towards the amelioration of conditions of life
on the land during the long years before the labourer's right
to a living wage was conceded. 1
As the century drew on the balance of advantage shifted.
Factory Acts to prevent the ruthless exploitation of men,
women, and children in factory and mine, the organization
of labour in trade unions for self-protection and advancement,
and the gradual evolution of a science of public health and
social service, made life better, morally and materially, for
the industrial workers. But the regulation of the hours and
conditions of industrial work, the combination of workers to
secure larger shares of the profits of their labour, the control
of public health, including housing and all the public ser-
vices, which were manifest more and more in the larger
centres of population as the past century proceeded, had
little counterpart throughout the length and breadth of rural
England. The repeal of the Corn Laws had synchronized
with the completion of the inclosure of the open fields, and
thirty years of unexampled prosperity for landlords, farmers,
and clergy had followed prosperity, it should be noted,
which was not shared by them with their men. The industrial
population was increasing more rapidly than the imported
food-supplies released by the repeal, and home agriculture
had to feed it.
The inclosure of fields and commons and the intensification
1 'When I was manager of the Magdala works', a well-known motor
magnate, turned farmer, once told an agricultural audience, 'if we had a
man we didn't like, or one who didn't pull his weight, we paid him off,
and we never saw him again. But I find you can't do that on the land.
If you get rid of a man you don't want, you see him hanging about the
village every time you go out, or his wife comes round and wants to see you,
or the parson tells you their children haven't got enough to eat. You've
got to carry the local population, win or lose, in the country.'
THE PROBLEM 5
of food production called for new equipment for the land,
and the prosperity of farming made its provision possible.
In the eastern half of England, particularly, where the largest
part of the nation's bread food was grown, landlords em-
barked upon a great programme of construction. On the
newly inclosed commons, farm-houses, buildings and cottages
were going up, as the reclamation of the land proceeded.
On the old inclosed lands rising standards of comfort and
of farming technique had to be met by the provision of
better farm-houses and buildings. Throughout the great
Midland plain and elsewhere, wherever the lack of a local
building stone had necessitated the construction of farm
workers' cottages of a light timber framing filled in with
wattle and daub and roofed with straw thatch, these poor
houses now gave place to new designs carried out in brick
and tile. On the land itself, also, much was done. The art of
under-draining had only recently been perfected, and tens
of thousands of acres were now tile-drained, ditches were
cut, and watercourses straightened and scoured.
Most of the farm-houses, cottages, and buildings of the
Midlands, and in varying degrees those of the rest of
England also, are less than a hundred years old; they were
built during the period of the Golden Age of British farming,
between 1840 and 1880. Since 1880, however, all active
development has stopped, and fields, farms, and homesteads
appear to-day practically as they were left when the great
agricultural depression set in during the last two decades of
Victoria's reign.
Now what are the implications of this position ? If this
equipment, as planned and provided for the practice of
farming so many years ago, is still sufficient for farming
to-day, the only possible conclusion is that there has been
neither technical progress nor social change during that time;
that the best farm practice to-day marks no advance on the
standards of a hundred years ago; that neither science nor
invention have made any contributions to rural life and
industry; that great changes in the social and economic
standards of the people have not affected the farmer's business.
6 THE PROBLEM
But what are the facts ? During the past sixty years farm
practice has undergone a revolution. There have been great
advances in knowledge of matters such as the breeding and
feeding of crops and stock. The old cropping rotations,
designed to make the farm self-sufficient in feeding-stuffs
for live stock and in manure for crops, have given place to
better and cheaper systems of producing food and maintain-
ing fertility, as the range of imported feeding-stuffs and of
artificial fertilizers expanded. Power machinery, limited then
to the steam-engine, has shown immense development,
particularly in association with the internal-combustion
engine. The travelling milking-bail has shown how to reduce
the costs of clean milk production, how to maintain the
fertility of light land without sheepfold or dung-cart, and
how many thousands of acres of rough grazings and of land
now derelict might still be reclaimed for more intensive
use. Finally, there has been a revolution in the conditions
governing the employment of labour. The farm worker, un-
organized and isolated, his labour sweated and no prospect
but the workhouse for his old age, now enjoys a statutory
minimum wage, regulated hours of labour, holidays with pay,
besides, of course, National Health and Unemployment In*
surance and the Old Age Pension. Fanning itself is a dynamic
industry, showing continuous change and evolution, but the
units in which it is practised, and their equipment, remain
substantially unaltered to-day at the point to which they
had evolved some sixty years ago.
Consider what has been happening during the same time
in urban areas. The past two generations have been periods
of the greatest activity in social and industrial life in slum
clearance and the provision and equipment of houses for
greater comfort and convenience; in the spread of public
utilities and public services of many kinds; in the organiza-
tion of education, public health, and social services. Pits
have been electrified; factories have been built and equipped,
and scrapped, rebuilt, and re-equipped as changing circum-
stances required. It would have been more difficult, obvi-
ously, for public authorities to undertake clearances of slum
THE PROBLEM 7
houses from the villages, and to provide farms and cottages
with water, gas, electricity, indoor sanitation, and so on, on
the present local basis of public finance, than it was to provide
these services in the towns. In the face of the long period
of economic depression, too, which overtook the farming
industry after the 'seventies and extinguished some 50 per
cent, of the capital invested in the land, the reassembly of
fields and farms in units better adapted to modern technical
conditions, the scrapping and rebuilding of obsolete equip-
ment, the maintenance of roads, fences, drains in conditions
of efficiency may have been beyond the strength of private
enterprise.
This difference between town and country in the rate of
industrial and social progress in recent times has only to
be realized, however, to indicate the field for reconstruction
which awaits the country planner. The towns have had their
failures, of course, as well as their successes, and only the pen
of a Cobbett could find words to describe the pass to which
uncontrolled development has brought too many of them.
But in their industrial efficiency and their civic consciousness
they set standards and provide examples which the rural
reformer cannot disregard. Country problems, of course,
are different, but there are common factors in the human
needs and aspirations of town and country folk alike.
These, then, seem to be the problems of country planning.
First , how can rural industrial life be reorganized and farm-
ing in particular so that it may give better returns both in
goods and in services, while providing more opportunity and
a higher standard of living to those engaged in it? Second,
how can living conditions in the country be improved, par-
ticularly housing and the services of the house, so as to bring
standards of comfort in rural areas more into conformity
with those of the towns ? Third, how can the handicap which
the small scale of so many village communities imposes upon
the organization of the churches, upon education, on all the
welfare services and the help, spiritual, moral, and material,
which the nation sets out to provide for the countryman and
8 THE PROBLEM
his family, be removed? Lastly, given satisfactory answers
to these questions, can anything be done to preserve the
amenities of the country-side and the beauty of the rural scene,
so that the destruction and the desecration arising from want
of thought, from lack of taste, or from the pursuit of profit,
which were spreading through the country on an ever-
increasing scale in the years before the war, may be brought
under control ?
CHAPTER II
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
SELECTION OF THE SURVEY AREA; THE TOPOGRAPHY; COMMUNICA-
TIONS AND TRANSPORT ; THE POPULATION ; STANDARDS OF LIVING ;
SHOPPING FACILITIES.
SELECTION OF THE SURVEY AREA
IT is a far cry, still, to the time when the planning and recon-
struction of the country-side will be going actively forward.
At present the basic information upon which they should
rest does not exist. Abstract examination and academic dis-
cussion of the problems have established certain principles.
Further progress depends, now, upon transferring the work
from the council chamber, the conference room, and the
drawing- office to the village, the farm, and the field, to see
what men, women, and children are doing, and to discover
how far the conditions under which their lives are lived are a
help or a hindrance to them. Only in this way can principles
be confirmed or corrected, first, and then reformulated for
translation into practice. The arguments against the one-
room school, for example, can be stated and agreed in the
Education Committee, but a decision to abolish all of them
would involve consideration on the spot, in each case, of the
reconstruction of buildings and of the restaffing which it
would necessitate, or, alternatively, of the arrangements
for transport of schoolchildren to neighbouring schools. A
national scheme to bring water-supplies into every village
would necessitate a survey of existing supplies and of all
natural resources, such information not now being available.
Other great problems, such as the conflict between private
and community interests, the question of the distribution of
the burden of the cost of reconstruction and the relations
of local to imperial taxation which it raises, have still to
be investigated. While these and so many more of the prac-
tical issues which are raised by the decision to plan still
remain to be faced, it is obvious that the actual siting of the
io THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
experimental plot, of the area selected for a pilot survey
of the physical, industrial, and social conditions of rural life
as a preliminary to planned reconstruction, is unimportant.
All the fundamental human needs are the same housing,
health services, education, and the amenities and oppor-
TKe Survcij Area
MtUs
tunities of life. Places and areas will differ as to the nature
and the extent of their own deficiencies, but this should not
discount the value of generalizations from the study of a
particular locality. Any district, mainly agricultural, in any
part of the country, can serve as the raw material of research
in the needs and in the methods of rural reconstruction,
THE TOPOGRAPHY
On this assumption it must be understood that the site
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT 11
of the survey described in the following pages has no special
significance, no particular bearing upon the problems of
country planning. It was selected for its convenience for
study and for other reasons quite unconnected with the
objects in view. It forms part of a broad tract of country in
a south-midland county, where the belt of the oolite, which
gives rise farther south to the bold escarpment of the Cots-
wolds, is interrupted by pockets of the underlying lias,
typical of the valleys running down it from the north
and west.
The area covered by this site comprises some 24 square
miles, or about 15,000 acres, being all that which is included
within the borders of one 6 in. Ordnance Survey sheet. It
lies comparatively high, for the most part between the 4OO-ft.
and the 5oo-ft. levels, and rising to 600 ft. at places in the
north and west where runs the watershed dividing Thames
and Severn. It is here that the rivers and streams watering
the area have their sources the largest of them winding
westward to meet the Avon in the Vale of Evesham, and
smaller streams running eastward, rapidly and narrow at
first, and then broadening out as they flow more gently
through the lower country towards the Cherwell.
By its situation between two main lines of rail, and served
itself only by a single line which crosses it to connect them,
the area is comparatively remote. Nor has the advent of
motor transport affected it very much, for only one main road
traverses it. It includes nine parishes and parts of six others.
There are three large villages, two on the eastern and one on
the western boundaries, and between them are nine small
ones, none being distant more than two miles from its
nearest neighbour. The market foci of the area are two
towns situated one to the north-east and the other to the
south-west of it, and roughly equidistant from its centre at
about seven miles. 1
1 The market towns of England are spaced, one from another, at inter-
vals approximately of ten to fifteen miles the distance which could be
covered conveniently by horse transport. The coming of motor vehicles
of all kinds has raised the practicable limit of travel for the conduct of a
day's business to some thirty or forty miles, and we are witnessing the
12 THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
Agriculture, of course, is the predominant industry, the
only other of any account being ironstone mining. There
are some stone pits, a small brewery, and a few very few
small rural industries, such as hurdle-making, blacksmithing,
&c. Here and there the streams have been harnessed in
times past to supply power for milling, but most of the mills
are now derelict or diverted from their original purposes to
generate electricity for domestic use. Of the total area about
87 per cent, can be accounted for as farming land. The re-
mainder consists of woodlands, allotments, parks, playing-
fields, quarries, a golf course, a landing-ground, a branch
railway, roads, and villages.
The soils are variable, being mainly medium and heavy
loams in the south and east where they derive from the lias,
while in the north and west the oolite has given rise to lime-
stone and sandy soils.
Climate and rainfall are those of the English Midlands.
The western side of the area is subject to strong westerly
winds by reason of its elevation and its proximity to the steep
Cotswold escarpment. In general, however, the district
forming the experimental plot for this economic and social
survey is typical of much that is rural England. There is
nothing strongly marked nor individual about its topography,
its soils, or its agriculture; industrial expansion has only just
begun to affect it. Its standards of housing and public ser-
vices, of estate equipment, education, and social organiza-
tions are those of any part of the country where things change
slowly, where the story of the people is the story of English
husbandry and its dependent crafts and industries.
COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSPORT
Only one main road crosses the Survey area, the one
joining the two market towns on either side of it. It passes
through two only of the villages. The rest are connected
with it, with each other, and with roads and places outside
the area by a network of secondary roads, the old parish roads,
expansion of market towns at such intervals and the decline of those
intermediate to them. This is one of the problems of country planning.
TWO SMALL VILLAGES
VILLAGE STREETS
THE EXPERIMENTAL Pl^OT 13
the layout of most of which is lost in antiquity. Many of
them have their origins in the bridle roads, 'ways', and paths
which took their course down the furlongs and along the
headlands of the open fields, serving the joint purpose of
access to the farmers' scattered holdings and of communica-
tion between village and village, as often appears from a
comparison of existing roads with the trackways on a pre-
inclosure map.
Nor is the area better served by the railway. A main line
passes along its eastern boundary at a distance of about four
miles, but to the north, west, and south of it there is none
within some eight miles. A single line passes across the
middle of the area from east to west, communicating with the
market towns and linking it to the main lines on either side.
Only two of the villages, Nos. 3 and 14, have stations on this
line, and there is a halt at No. 18. There are four trains each
way on week-days and none on Sundays.
It follows that the villages of the Survey area are depen-
dent for transport, alike to the market centres and to main-
line stations, very largely upon the bus services. These are
organized mainly to give shopping facilities, and every
village is served by not less than three buses on two days
a week, the market-day and Saturday, while some of the
larger ones and those better placed have up to a dozen ser-
vices on these days. A few of the villages have no bus trans-
port during the rest of the week or on Sundays, but most of
them have services ranging from one to eight every day. The
trouble is, of course, that most of the services originate out-
side the area, and it is said that the buses, most of them single-
deckers, are often full before they reach it.
Farmers and others have their own cars, and some of the
industrial workers who live in the villages are carried to and
from the factory, outside one of the market towns at which
they are engaged, in works buses. There are carriers who
ply between the villages and the market towns.
THE POPULATION
It is common knowledge that the numbers of agricultural
14 THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
workers have fallen steadily and heavily during the past two
generations, and this is true, also, of the rural population as
a whole. The conversion of ploughland to pasture, the decay
of rural industries and of village tradesmen, the tendency to
use more machinery and fewer men these and other things
have combined to reduce the demand for labour on the land
and the opportunities for other employment in the country-
side.
TABLE I
Changes in the Population of the Survey Area, 1881-1931
Changes in
Civil parish
50 years
no. on map
1881
1891
1901
1911
7921
i93i
Nos.
%
I. The larger
villages
3
U
1,232
1,265
1,340
1,386
1,340
1,349
1,236
1,384
1,153
i, 080
- 70
-458
20
1,958
1,777
1,490
1,460
1,339
1,234
-724
Total
4,728
4,382
4,216
4,150
3,959
3.467
1,261
-26
II. The smal-
ler villages
i
43i
420
394
368
316
301
-130
2
267
276
255
265
297
332
+ 65
4
358
287
255
234
241
209
-149
5
416
387
310
292
308
194
222
8 and 9
265
357
245
320
211
301
226
3i8
215
270
224
297
I ft
10
324
282
222
237
220
- 95
ii
221
219
109
138
121
1 68
53
12
4 l8
375
366
367
313
281
-137
13
158
164
159
132
144
158
15 and 16
18
378
131
397
136
286
149
3l6
161
160
239
173
-139
+ 42
Total
3,724
3,508
3,105
3,039
2,885
2,805
-919
25
III. All
villages
8,452
7,890
7,321
7,189
6,844
6,272
2,180
-26
IV. The ad-
ministrative
county
144,908
143,753
137,124
136,436
132,579
129,082
-15,826
-II
The Survey area illustrates the general experience. With
two exceptions all its village populations have declined
steadily, the fall amounting to about 25 per cent, in the
aggregate, during the fifty years, 1881-1931. Population in
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT 15
the administrative county in which the area is situated fell
also during the same period, but not so severely, the growth
of industrialism in some parts and of residential housing in
others having offset some of the rural decline. This fall, as
it appears from the accompanying figure, has been fairly
constant throughout the period. The gradual recovery of
agricultural prices in the early years of this century, and the
stimulus of the first German war, caused some check to the
decline, but it resumed its former rate when the post-war
slump set in. To-day, probably, there are fewer people
living and working in the Survey area than at any time within
the past 100 years.
The problem of the economic and social organization of
these small communities is the most difficult, perhaps, of any
that will confront the country planner, and it is discussed in
the general summary at the end of this report. In the mean-
time an analysis of the occupations of the people now living
in ten of them, two large and eight small, may throw a little
light on the position.
Agriculture is the largest single occupation, but it accounts
for less than 31 per cent, of the occupied population. The
number of farmers and farmers' relatives together exceeds
that of the farm workers, and this reflects the prevalence of
small family-farms. Factory workers, male and female,
account for 19 per cent., and business and professional
workers for about 10 per cent., of the total, and details of these
and other occupations may be seen in the accompanying
table, covering ten parishes of the area.
The distance of the home from the place of work is of some
importance, as bearing upon the housing problem if there is
to be any planned decentralization of industry in the future.
Should factory workers be housed in new towns adjoining
their work, or should they be absorbed in existing village
communities within a convenient radius ? An analysis of the
1,221 workers, male and female, showed that nearly 800 of
them (64 per cent.) live within three miles of their work,
nearly 300 (23 per cent.) live within five pules, about 100
(9 per cent.) have to go between five and ten miles, while
9000
6750
8500
8250
Sooo
7750
7500
7250
7000
6750
6500
6250
6000
5750
5500
5*50
5000
DECLINE IN POPULATION IN
THE SURVEY AREA
18SI-1931
'01
'it
'21
gooo
S750
8500
8250
8000
7T5<>
7500
7^50
7000
6750
6500
6^0
6000
5750
5500
5*50
5000
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
TABLE II
The Distribution of Occupations in Ten Villages of the
Survey Area
Main occupation
No.
Percentage
of those
'gainfully'
occupied
Farmers and smallholders: 107 working farmers, 57 far-
mers' relatives, 4 smallholders ....
Agrttultural workers 1 ......
Ancillary agricultural occupations: 37 gardeners, 4 casual
agricultural labourers, 8 tractor drivers, 5 thatchers,
3 blacksmiths. 2 each: farm bailiffs, tractor repair la-
bourers, hay and straw merchants, hay tiers, i each:
cattle food distributor, corn merchant's assistant, es-
tate agent, farm carpenter, landowner, miller, mole-
catcher, motor plough driver, saddler, seedsman's
traveller, Thames Conservancy employee, threshing
gang proprietor, tractor contractor, tractor contractor's
foreman, W.A.E.C. officer
1 68
127
< 80
I3-7
10-4
6-6
Total: Agricultural
375
30-7
Factory workers: 149 male, 83 female ....
Distributive trades .......
Building trades (including 18 carpenters)
Transport workers .......
Public utility workers: 24 postal service, 14 roadmen, 5
electric power co. employees .....
Domestic servants .......
Professional workers : 3 1 schoolmistresses, 3 1 office work-
ers, 15 nurses, 14 schoolmasters, 8 clergy, 5 civil ser-
vants., 4 business men, 3 policemen, 2 insurance co.
agents, i each: rent collector, drill sergeant, University
scientist ........
Others: 47 ironstone workers, 44 aerodrome labourers,
17 general labourers, 13 brewery employees, 7 cobblers,
6 'odd-jobs-men', 6 timber merchant's labourers, 3
golf-course employees, 2 hairdressers' assistants, 2
members of the Observer Corps, i each : stone-quarry
proprietor, stone-quarry labourer, lime-pit labourer,
sand-pit labourer, wig-maker, sexton, member of the
N.F.S
232
105
68
38
43
90
116
154
IQ'O
8-6
5'5
3'i
3'5
7'4
9'5
12-7
Total: Non-agricultural .....
846
69-3
Total: Gainfully Occupied
1,221
lOO'O
Housewives ........
Retired persons .......
Children
816
359
659
TOTAL RESIDENT POPULATION .....
3,055
Absent in H.M. Forces ......
182
1 Including zo prisoners-of-war.
C
i8
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
nearly 50 of them (4 per cent.) travel daily more than ten
miles to work.
The principal employer of 'non-agricultural workers is a
big factory outside the market town. The map on page 276
shows the numbers of workers from each village who are
employed there.
There has been some reduction in the total of agricultural
employment during the war. Farming being a reserved
occupation, its contribution to the Forces has been relatively
small, but factories and aerodromes have taken their toll.
Losses have been partially replaced in various ways, and the
war-time balance sheet appears as follows:
Agriculture's War-time Labour
Balance Sheet
Dr.
Gained from:
Schools .
Housewives
Distributive Trades
Other occupations
No occupation
Prisoners of war
Balance, being net loss
2
5
i
i
2
II
IO
21
32
53
Lost to:
Forces
Factories
Aerodrome
Ironstone
Other occupations
Cr.
20
21
8
3
i
53
STANDARDS OF LIVING
All proposals for the improvement of standards of living
depend in the last resort upon the real incomes of the
workers. There have been very few investigations of recent
years of family budgets of country folk, and these relate
entirely to the pre-war period. It was beyond the scope of
this Survey to organize a thorough investigation in the area,
but with the assistance of members of Women's Institutes,
fifty-three housewives were found who were willing to supply
information about their household expenditure.
There was no attempt to sample the whole area, and the
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT 19
inquiry was restricted to three of the smaller villages with no
big industry other than agriculture, and two of the larger
ones, one of which includes workers in a neighbouring factory
while the other is dependent upon the ironstone quarries for
the bulk of local employment, direct and indirect. The in-
quiry followed the usual form of a list of questions and
account books, suppplemented by a few visits, and ultimately
forty-five usable budgets were obtained. These were not
enough, obviously, to admit of much classification, but they
were split into six occupational groups: A. agricultural
workers; B. farmers; C. smallholders; D. industrial workers;
E. professional workers (comprising three elementary school
teachers, a secondary schoolmaster, and a policeman); F.
retired persons. The resultant groups include from 3 to 18
TABLE III
Constitution, Income, and Expenditure of
Forty-five Families
Occupation of head
of household
A
Agricul-
tural
worker
B
Farmer
C
Small-
holder
D
Indus-
trial
worker
&
Profes-
sional
worker
F
Retired
No. of households
ii
4
4
18
5
3
Average ages
Over 21
Under 21 .
Average family
Add Lodgers
Total family and
lodgers
Equivalent to adult
males
Nos.
2-27
0*63
Nos.
2-50
1-25
Nos.
2'00
I'OO
Nos.
;$
Nos.
2-40
1-40
Nos.
2'00
2-90
0-63
3*75
0-25
3-00
0-25
3-72
0-51
3'8o
2'OO
0-67
3*53
2-99
4-00
3'56
3*25
2-78
4-23
3^4
3-8o
3'2T
2'6 7
2 . 37
Average total weekly
income
s. d.
86 8
s. d.
s. d.
*
s. d.
104 xi
S. d.
151 o
s. d.
42 6
Average total weekly
expenditure
Average per adult
male
81 i
87 6i
56 ioi
92 2
149 lit
67 7*
ay i
*4 5
20 2
** 5
46 9
28 3
Not recorded.
ao THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
households samples so small as to demand care in their
interpretation, but the figures have been tabulated and they
serve to suggest where the emphasis may be expected in
expenditure at various income levels. The expenditure was
recorded in the month of July 1943.
There were lodgers in all the groups except that of pro-
fessional worker, and including them, the households
correspond exactly to the national average of 379 for agri-
cultural workers. 1
Total income ranged from 175. qd. per adult per week
amongst the retired persons, to 47$. amongst the professional
class. Weekly records of farmers' and smallholders' incomes
were not available, these being calculable only at the end of
the farming year. Total expenditure varied very closely with
total income, the exception being the retired persons, who
spent some 50 per cent, more, and it must be assumed that
they were anticipating income or drawing upon savings. All
the groups were able to supplement their food purchases by
produce of many kinds from their gardens or farms. This
was valued at country prices, and it represented weekly
additions to the food consumed ranging from is. 8d. per adult
in the retired persons' households to 45. %d. amongst the
farmers'. For the purposes of budget calculations, too, the
farmers and smallholders live free of house-rent and rates,
these items being aggregated with the rents of their agri-
cultural land.
In the next table the total weekly expenditure by each
occupational group is analysed under the following headings :
I. Food; II. House and Services; III. Medical, Insurance,
and Clubs; IV. Amenities.
Food. There is not much difference between the groups in
their expenditure upon food, agreement being due in part, no
doubt, to rationing, for there was no evidence that ration
allocations were not fully taken up. Extra rations available
sugar for jam, cheese, meat pies were drawn by those en-
titled to them, and the wives of the farmers and smallholders
were unanimous that their husbands ought to be on the same
1 Figure kindly supplied by Professor A. L. Bowley.
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
TABLE IV
Analysis of Total Weekly Expenditure
A
B
C
D
E
F
s. d.
s. d.
*. d.
s. d.
s. d.
s. d.
I. Food
Purchased .
Home-grown, va-
lued at .
32 8*
6 4
33 9*
'5 o
27 9
14 i*
39 ii
4 7i
37 i*
S 9
24 o
4 5
Total Food
Average per adult
male
39 o
13 i
48 10
13 *t
41 10*
*5 o*
44 6
JJ 9
42 10$
JJ 4i
28 5
12 2\
II. House and ser-
vices
Rent and rates .
Fuel and light .
Clothing .
Laundry and do-
mestic help
Sundries .
4 6
6 ui
14 6
3" a*
9 ii
i 9
5 o
2 6*
6" 6*
6
6 o
2 0*
8 4
7 o
7 9*
5 ioi
9 9i
4 ii
21 6
3 i 3
8 10
ii 9
in
5*'4i
Total House, &c.
Average per adult
male
29 2
10
19 2*
5 4
15 I
5 5
29 4
5 II
80 ii
2^ II
27 loj
a 5
III. Medical, insur-
ance, and clubs
Medical services
and medicines
Medical and hos-
pital insurance
Life and endow-
ment insurance
Clubs and trade
union subs.
Charities .
II
i 7i
4 6*
7 6 |
10
3 4
4 3
i 9
9
2 O
: i*
3 10
i i
2 6*
Mi
2 I0|
I II
9
6
i 8
"8*
Total Medical, &c.
Average per adult
male
8 3
2 8
10 2
2 JO
6 4*
^ 3
9 9
2 9
4 ioi
* 3
3 7*
i 3
IV. Amenities
Drink and tobacco
Travelling
Entertainment,
papers, books,
&c.
7 3
i 5
2 3
12 3
4 4
7 9*
3 7
i 6
2 7
7 ii
2 9
2 6*
8 4
7 ii
ii 7*
6 5
7
4 7
Total Amenities
Average per adult
male
IO II
3 4
24 4i
6 9
7 8
2 6
13 a*
4 o
27 ioj
* 5
ii 7
4 7
22 THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
footing as the farm workers for the extra cheese allocation.
These two classes, however, appear to be more able to sup-
plement their rations from their own resources than the
others.
House and Services. It is clear that the agricultural worker
has a cash advantage over the other groups in his payments
for rent and rates. It will be interesting to see whether this
will continue when his wages reach more of a parity with
those of industrial workers. The glaring discrepancies
between the groups in their expenditure on some of the other
items is due to special outlays by one or two households.
The heavy payment for ' Sundries' by the professional workers'
group, for example, was explained by the purchase of prams
by two families and of a bookcase by a third. The high charge
for 'Laundry and domestic help' in the smallholders' group
is due entirely to payments by one family in which the wife is
professionally engaged outside the home.
Medical, Insurance, and Clubs. It is not possible usefully to
comment on these expenses.
Amenities. Money spent upon the luxuries and semi-
luxuries of life seems to be determined, apart from the amount
of total income, by the occupation. Thus, the farmer can
smoke on the job and can get away from it, and so it appears
that his expenditure on drink, tobacco, and travelling is more,
proportionately, than that of the other groups. The profes-
sional class, represented as it is in this inquiry so largely by
teachers, has more leisure and more inclination for reading,
and its expenditure upon books and entertainments is pro-
portionately high. The smallholders' group, too, reflects the
long hours of work and the low cash standard which are
commonly associated with their calling, in the economies
which must be practised in any amenity expenditure.
Further generalizations would be inadmissible on the
volume of evidence provided by this inquiry. It points the
method, however, and enough has been done to show that,
given more time, it could have been extended to provide a
broader sample.
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT 23
SHOPPING FACILITIES
'Shopping centres' are mostly to seek in the Survey area.
The three larger villages are fairly well equipped with the
usual food shops, except fishmongers, and there is a sprink-
ling of other businesses drapers', boot-repairers', tailors',
watchmakers', hardware, and cycles and radio.
In the smaller villages the housewife's opportunities are
more limited. Nearly all of them have a general shop some-
times connected with the Post Office and some have more
than one. There are few butchers, and hardly more bakers,
and the people are dependent upon the service of travelling
tradesmen and upon expeditions to the market town for many
of their requisites.
Doubtless this is as it always has been in greater or in less
degree. In times not so long past the dwellers in the small
villages and scattered homes were more self-reliant than they
are to-day. The rounded bread-ovens, thatched or stone-
slated, which form such pleasant features of every old house
and cottage in the Survey area, recall the time when every
woman baked for her family. Pig-keeping and bacon-curing,
clothes-making and boot-repairing, gardening and gleaning,
all of these things made the country-folk more independent
of the shops than they are to-day, but the market towns were
always there to supply such other needs as their means could
satisfy. That, of course, was how the towns came to be, and
with the introduction of cheap and rapid transport they have
seized the opportunity to extend their services by taking
standard goods bread, groceries, meat, &c. out to the
villages, and by organizing transport cheap railway fares and
special buses on market-days to bring the villagers into the
towns to make their own selections of other goods.
This, of course, is as it should be. It reduces the house-
wife's toil, extends her choice, and relieves the monotony of
which she may sometimes be conscious in her daily round. 1
1 In her book Lark Rise Flora Thompson has described the daily life
of country folk in a hamlet not far from the Survey area, in the i88o's.
The story brings out the isolation and self-dependence of village life sixty
years ago.
24 THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
In the Survey area both of these methods of marketing are
apparent. An enterprising co-operative and industrial society
has set itself to organize the delivery of goods to all the villages
within a ten-mile radius of the market town, either through
branch stores at convenient sub-centres, of which there is one
in each of the three larger villages in the area, or direct from
head-quarters. Every member in the area can depend in
peace-time upon a daily van delivery, and upon a visit three
times a week from the travelling meat shop. In war-time
there is a daily delivery of milk and bread and a fortnightly
delivery of all other goods. A full service is offered, which
includes, even in war time, groceries, milk, meat, bread, coal,
oil, hardware and other household equipment, newspapers,
and the services of carpenters and bricklayers. Savings
facilities are offered to members, and there is, of course, the
potent attraction of the 'divvy'.
Competitors of the Co-operative and Industrial Society
are the other large stores in the market town and the general
shops in the villages. It is said that owing to reduced delivery
services since the war, many of those who used to shop away
register now, for rationed goods, with the village shopkeepers.
For shoppers travelling to the market town the special bus
services have been noted already, and other special arrange-
ments for the convenience of country customers include an
extension of the hours of business in many of the shops on
market-day.
CHAPTER III
FARMS AND FARMING
SOILS; TYPES OF FARMING; THE STRUCTURE OF FARMS AND FIELDS;
FARMS AND SOILS ; FIELDS.
As noted already rather more than 86 per cent, of the land of
the Survey area is farming land. Most of it was inclosed
about the beginning of last century, and there is ocular
evidence that, except for one or two sandy heaths and some
wet places in the valleys, the whole of the area has been under
the plough at one time or another. Here and there, on the
stronger soils, very high-backed lands* and headlands heaped
with the cleanings of old mouldboards are still sharply de-
fined under their protecting grass covering, and they suggest
an early reversion to grass husbandry following the collapse
of corn prices after the Napoleonic Wars. Arthur Young
visited the locality on one of his tours, and it is interesting to
recall his suggestion that the time had come when advantage
should be taken of the allotment and inclosure of the common
grazings to bring them under the plough, and to rest some of
the old ploughlands for a while, in grass. History is repeating
itself to-day.
SOILS
The soils of the area have been studied and classified in
great detail. For the purposes of this Survey the various
types have been grouped into four main kinds, each one of
which is sufficiently uniform for farming practice and for
convenience of description, although in fact it comprises
several minor variations. (See Map, Surface soils and roads.)
Sands. Sandy soils occur capping some of the high ground ;
they are light, hungry, inclined to sourness, and they have
lost much of their 'body' through erosion. Under the
plough these soils are always short of humus and plant
food, while under grass they grow only thin, upland herbage
of littte value.
Limestone. This gives rise to light, brashy soils with a
SURFACE SOILS AND ROADS
Limestone
SancUj soils
Ironstone lodms
ltfr loams and cleans
FARMS AND FARMING 27
good lime content. They are easy to work, well drained, and
particularly suitable for hurdling sheep.
Ironstone Loams. These are the red lands which are so
characteristic of some parts of the Midlands. Arthur Young
describes them as being 'uncommonly good'. They are easily
worked and make very fine corn lands, always with the
proviso that in this area the crops grown upon them will not
stand drought. Farmers say that they want rain once a fort-
night.
Heavy Loams and Clays. Like the last named these are
good soils, and though less suited to the plough, they make
very good grassland. In the area of the Survey, however,
there is very little really strong land.
Even when the soils are thus simplified, their diffusion
over the area is very complex, and it is hardly possible any-
where to travel so far as a mile across country on the same
soil. There is one large block of sand about two miles by one,
and another which is about one mile square. The limestone
occurs in three narrow and irregular strips. There are three
large areas of the ironstone loam, each about one mile across
at its widest, but the heavier loams and clays are widely
interspersed among the three other kinds of soil. Areas
predominantly of one soil are frequently interrupted by small
outcrops of the others. In all this the Survey area is no
exception, for this mosaic of surface soils is manifest generally
throughout the country.
TYPES OF FARMING
With the exception of the poorest sands, most of the soils
in the area are very good corn-growing lands. Farming
before the end of last century seems to have followed, for
the most part, a five-course rotation with three corn crops.
Wheat and oats were the principal grains; bulky crops of
barley could be grown, but it was rarely a quality sample and
most of it was fit only for grinding. Hurdled sheep on the
big breadths of roots, and yarded bullocks in the big straw-
yards, were the live stock of the system, and the animals
served to maintain the soil fertility. Most of the area was
28 FARMS AND FARMING
unsuited to breeding flocks, this being attributed locally to
lack of lime in the soil. Certainly the few farms on which the
limestone comes near the surface have always been sought
after by neighbouring fanners as places on which to run
lambs. Some of the stronger land was bare fallowed instead
of carrying root crops for sheep. Calves were raised, and
there was some butter production for the market.
This system was sound enough in its day. The farms were
largely self-sufficient, the live stock being kept mainly on
home-grown foods. The sheepfold and the dung-cart main-
tained soil fertility. The large areas of roots and the occasional
bare fallows kept the land clean. Labour was cheap and
plentiful. This sort of farming, however, could not survive the
great economic changes of the last few decades. Falling corn
prices and rising wages wiped out profits, and nothing so
sharply defined, which would conserve the resources of the
soil so well and employ so much labour, seems to have
established itself in its place, even after a generation or more
of masters and men has passed. But while a tribute is due to
the old, self-contained husbandry, it must be remembered
that in its very self-sufficiency it cut itself off ultimately
from the advantages of cheap feeding-stuffs and fertilizers,
and that much of its financial success was owed to sweated
labour. 1 The changes which have been forced upon the area
are well illustrated by one farm of about 1,100 acres which,
within living memory, employed more than 50 men and
carried a large flock of breeding ewes. This farm to-day,
split into three holdings, provides work for no more than 12
men, and it has lost touch almost entirely with the Golden
Hoof.
The reconstruction of the farming system of the Survey
area which the agricultural depression of the 'eighties and
'nineties necessitated, might have been based on the motto
'Go slow*. Clearly there was nothing to be gained by forcing
the pace of the old arable farming system. As Sir John Lawes
put it, high farming was no remedy for low prices, and when
1 When Arthur Young surveyed the county in 1808 the farm worker's
wage was 6s. a week, and a hundred years later it was no more than 12$.
FARMS AND FARMING 29
you were losing money on what you produced there was no
advantage in selling a quantity. The most general response
to changing conditions here, as elsewhere, was to reduce
corn production during any time of low prices, and to put
more and more of the ploughlands down to grass ; this con-
tinued right up to the outbreak of war. By contrast, there
were a few men, here and there, who found ways of carrying
on, such as Samuel Farmer in Wiltshire, George Baylis in
Berkshire, John Prout in Hertfordshire, and, of course, all
the Scottish farmers from Aberdeenshire to the Border.
The generality of farmers, however, sought salvation in the
reduction of the cultivated land by grassing it down and in the
reduction of the labour force, and so it was in the Survey area.
Hurdle flocks have been reduced, with serious consequences
to the arable land in the lighter parts. Only a few of the more
progressive farmers have turned to artificials never used in
the old days except for superphosphate applied to roots or
to clover, mustard, or rape ploughed in, to do the work once
done by sheep and bullocks. The only men who fold sheep
to-day are those with a son or two on the farm, for paid men
will not work the long hours, and the produce of their labour
would not pay their wages even though they would. It is
much the same story of bullock fattening, once an integral
part of the arable farming system, for the low prices of beef
and the scarcity of the right kind of labour have virtually put
an end to it. Nor is it only the shortage of labour, but also its
cost. Like many other parts of England, the Survey area is
revealed as being almost devoid of adequate water-supplies
for its farms and fields. In summer time many farmers
would have a man employed full time with the water-cart,
hauling water to bullocks on waterless pastures day after day.
Even in winter some had to cart water to their yarded
bullocks, a cost which could not be contemplated to-day.
As a consequence yards have become dilapidated, gradually,
through disuse. Fences are down, sheds are ruinous, and even
where there is a well from which the stock was once watered,
the top is decayed and fallen in, or the pump is beyond repair.
The most general response, then, to changing economic
3 o FARMS AND FARMING
conditions up to 1939 was to put land down to grass. This
was associated with an increase in milk production here as in
other districts, and it was facilitated by the steady develop-
ment of road transport which was going on at the same time.
The development of dairying was, indeed, the natural and
proper resort of farmers. Beaten by the prices of corn in the
open world-market, they turned from plough farming to grass
farming and produced milk for the home market, protected
naturally from overseas competition by the perishability of
the commodity. The opening of a depot by one of the big
milk-distributing firms in the market town, and a milk-col-
lection service organized in connexion with it after the war
of 1914-18, were additional incentives, but unfortunately
there were limiting factors, of which water-supplies and
buildings were the more important. The provision of water
for the farms in this area, as over the country generally, was
entirely fortuitous. On some farms springs had been tapped
or wells sunk to supply the buildings. On some, streams and
ponds sufficed to water the pastures. On very few was there
cowshed accommodation conforming to the standards rightly
required by the local sanitary authorities. These holdings
had been equipped by the landowners for corn and meat
production, and, at a time when rents had fallen, a fresh
capital outlay on the provision of water and of milking-sheds
for a new system of farming was often beyond their means.
A good many farmers, unable for these reasons to take up
dairying, turned to stock-raising and to the grass breeds of
sheep, with the consequence that, except on those holdings
where the use of artificials was understood and where the
farmer and his family could provide most of the labour, such
ploughlands as remained showed considerable deterioration
from their former high state of fertility, owing to the want of
the shecpfold and of farmyard manure.
This, then, is the background against which the general
layout of the land for farming in the Survey area has to be
examined. A prosperous, self-contained system of corn
and meat production had broken down by the beginning of
the century, and grass farming of one kind or another had
FARMS AND FARMING 31
taken its place. The old arable system flickered into a sem-
blance of life once more during the war of 1914-18 and the
year or two which followed, only to drop back again in the
very early 'twenties. A few men who were able to embark
upon the growing dairying industry were carrying on, there-
after, with moderate financial success and the maintenance
of a fair standard of output from their land. Others, unable
to exploit this opportunity for lack of the necessary equip-
ment or by their own inadaptability, drifted on under semi-
ranching conditions with the production of grass sheep and a
few dry stock. Many of them would have found it difficult,
probably, to survive more than another few years under
pre-war conditions.
THE STRUCTURE OF FARMS AND FIELDS
With these facts in mind the structure of the farms and
fields of the Survey area can now be examined to find out, if
possible, whether these are determined by the dictates of
physical or economic conditions, or what other circumstances
may account for their particular shapes and sizes. Has the
nature of the soil, for example, been the overriding influence,
or is it the type of farming which has influenced present
arrangements ? Or again, how far has the farmer's mechanical
equipment set optimum limits to the sizes of his fields and
farms? Failing all these explanations, how can the present
layout of the land be accounted for, and can its continuance
be justified ?
The Sizes and Shapes of the Farms. The Survey area
shows the preponderance of small farms, a preponderance
which is general throughout the country. Nearly one-half of
the area (46 per cent.) is occupied by holdings of less than
150 acres. There are 123 farms in all, and three-quarters of
them are these small to medium-sized units. There are no
very large farms, the biggest being 525 acres ; only 5 per cent,
of the total number are over 300 acres, and the average size of
farms for the whole area is 109 acres. The predominance
of the medium-sized farm is clearly brought out in the fol-
lowing table:
FARMS AND FARMING
*>
TABLE V
Size Groups of Farms
Acreage
No. of farms
Percentage of
area
5 to 50 acres ....
50 to 100 ....
Farms between 5 and 100 acres
44
23
67
7'3
I2'2
19-5
100 to 150 acres ....
28
22
50
27-1
34-9
62
Farms between 100 and 300 acres .
Farms exceeding 300 acres
6 6
18-5
18-5
123 | 123
100
100
Six farmers in farms exceeding 300 acres hold about as
much land as sixty-seven farmers in farms of less than 100
acres, but the predominant type is the man farming in the
middle group, between 100 and 300 acres. Numerically
these are almost as important as the smallholders, and they
occupy more than three times as much land as either the
larger or the smaller farmers.
Large and small farms are intermixed. No part of the area
is characterized by one or the other.
A twofold explanation is offered for the rarity of large
farms exceeding 300 acres. There has been little flexibility in
the size of the farmer's holding since the inclosure of the
open fields. A successful man can expand his business only
by taking on a nearby holding, or, less often, by taking odd
fields which may occur, here and there, unequipped as
separate holdings. Or a farmer with sons who take kindly
to farming may add one or two holdings to his business, and
the boys will hive off into them when they want to marry
and be independent. Thus the parent business contracts to
its original size. Only in rare instances does the farmer take
his sons into partnership and continue in an expanding
business, and no example of such organization has been
found in the Survey area. Where the farm is increased by the
DERELICT FARM BUILDINGS
FARM BUILDINGS
Above: Old steading. Below: Modern pig house
FARMS AND FARMING 33
addition of odd parcels of land, here and there, the mere
difficulty of managing the awkwardly arranged holding
imposes a limit on indefinite expansion.
In this connexion a feature of the farms in the Survey area,
and one which is common to many parts of the country, is the
number which do not lie compact in ring fences. In the
Survey area more than 25 per cent, lie in two, three, and even
up to six detached blocks.
TABLE VI
Farms Ring-fenced or Scattered
No.
Per cent, of
total no.
Range of size
Ring-fenced farms
Farms in 2 blocks
Farms in 3 blocks
Farms in 5 blocks
Farms in 6 blocks
go
21
9
2
I
73
17
7
2
I
Acres
5-513
16-300
94-525
38-127
139
123
IOO
The Convenience of the Layout. The problems which
this scattering presents may best be considered in connexion
with a discussion of the general layout of the farms for con-
venience of working, though no two persons given the task
of classifying the farms on this basis would produce exactly
the same result, for too many of the issues depend upon
individual judgement.
In the first place, it may be assumed that it is not until a
farm is larger than about 50 acres that its layout has much
effect upon its convenience. If, for example, a 5<D-acre farm
were to consist entirely of fields only 10 chains wide placed
end to end, the distance from one end of the farm to the other
would be not much more than half a mile. Farms under 50
acres, therefore, may be neglected. Secondly, most of the
farms which lie in scattered parcels consist of one main block,
with one or more very much smaller outliers. Thus, it may
be assumed that apart from the special problems which arise
because a farm is scattered, any conclusions reached from a
34 FARMS AND FARMING
study of the ring-fenced farms will be applicable also to the
area as a whole. For the present, therefore, the scattered
farms may also be omitted.
Although there may be occasional exceptions, it is a fair
generalization to say that the longer and narrower a farm
FIG. i.
becomes the less convenient it is to work. 1 In this area
something like two farms in three are reasonably well pro-
portioned, only six of the total of 123 being excessively long
and narrow. This does not mean, however, that all, or even
most, of them are conveniently laid out. Those which can so
be described number only seventeen, and they range in size
from 55 to 513 acres, the main characteristics which they
have in common being that they are compact, well served by
roads, and their buildings are suitably sited (Fig. i). Even so,
a few awkward features appear in some of them. One has an
occupation road a quarter of a mile in length. Another has no
1 One exception is the farm of this kind bordered by a road running the
length of one of its longer sides. None of the very long farms in the area
adjoins such a road.
FARMS AND FARMING
35
farm-house, the farmer living in a village four miles away.
A third is cut into by a large narrow field which does not go
with the holding.
The next group of farms in order of convenience comprises
those where the general layout is good, but where con-
siderable inconvenience is caused by poor access. There are
FIG. 2.
eleven of them. The far corner of one of these farms consists
of steep grass slopes on clay. Given a satisfactory water-
supply, the obvious place for the buildings would be central
to the arable land, near the two roads that skirt it. Instead,
they are on the edge of the clay, 700 yards from a road.
Another of the farms would lose nothing by having the
buildings in a village which it adjoins, instead of on the op-
posite side of the holding, half a mile along a poor farm-track.
The shape of another farm gives rise to a long occupation
road which would be avoided if the farm were laid out in a
square (Fig. 2). The other farms in this group, some quite
compact, are all in their different ways very inconvenient to
reach.
j6 FARMS AND FARMING
Next comes a group of ten farms, suffering from a variety
of defects of layout, not so seriously, however, that some
reasonably easy adjustments would not make them into
workable units. Most of them include blocks of land which,
for one reason or another, are remote and inaccessible. Five
suffer either from having long narrow strips of land pro-
truding from one corner or from having similar strips in-
FIG. 3.
truding from adjoining farms. All of them would be greatly
improved by being rounded off or squared up.
Finally, there are fourteen farms where the inconvenience
of layout is such that nothing short of complete reshaping
would make them workable. Some are needlessly cut up, or
cut into, by intervening fields in other occupation (Fig. 3),
and most of them are long and narrow, so that many of the
fields are hard to reach. As already noticed, there are six
farms which are excessively elongated. Two of them touch
roads only at one end. Three others stretch between two
roads, so that their far ends must be reached either by cir-
cuitous journeys or along great lengths of farm-track (Fig. 4).
FARMS AND FARMING
37
FIG. 4.
FIG. 5.
On four of them the farm-houses and buildings are at one end
of the farm, being either in or handy to a village, thus avoiding
long occupation roads, which is their only convenience. On a
fifth the buildings are central, but a quarter of a mile from a
38 FARMS AND FARMING
road. The sixth has been built up by adding field to field,
and now lies in the form of an irregular L, with a road along
one branch and across the other (Fig. 5). The buildings are
about equidistant from the two ends of the farm, but they
are 400 yards from a road.
The position is summarized in Table VII.
TABLE VII
Convenience of Farm Layout
No. of
Per cent.
farms
of total no.
Range of size
i. Farms with convenient
Acres
layout
i?
33
55-513
2. Farms with convenient
layout but poor access .
ii
21
54-173
3. Farms inconvenient, but
capable of improvement
without great alteration
10
19
54-396
4. Farms inconvenient, and
incapable of much im-
provement without dras-
tic change .
H
2?
55-313
Farms of all sizes are found in each group. As already
indicated, some small farms are workable only because they
are small; others are very inconvenient in spite of being
small. On the other hand, some larger farms are inconvenient
because they tend to straggle, while others, owing to their
size, tend to gain access to roads at several points and thus to
be relatively easy to work.
On the assumption that the method of classification used
in Table VII groups the farms roughly in order of con-
venience, the relationships between the sizes of farms and
their convenience is worth noting.
It would seem that, up to a point, a large farm runs a
greater risk of being inconvenient than does a small one, but
that when the extremes of inconvenience are reached, the
small farms again predominate. This would bear out the
obvious conclusion that although a small farm is less likely
to have remote fields or other inconvenient features, it can
FARMS AND FARMING 39
tolerate degrees of inconvenience which would make a larger
farm quite unworkable owing to the greater distances entailed,
A very long and very narrow farm, for example, can still be
worked provided that it be of moderate size. The same
layout on a larger scale would be unmanageable.
TABLE VIII
Sizes of Farms and Convenience of Layout
(as in Table VII)
i
2
3
4
Farms over 150 acres
%
35
%
45
%
60
%
29
Farms under 150 acres
65
55
40
7i
100
IOO
IOO
IOO
That the length of a farm in relation to its breadth has a
good deal to do with its convenience of working is further
illustrated from the same four groups of farms. Only 12 per
cent, of the farms in the 'convenient' group are more than
three times as long as they are broad, whereas the corre-
sponding proportion among the Very inconvenient' farms
is 79 per cent.
The foregoing analysis leaves out of account the group of
farms mentioned earlier which consist of one main block
with one or more much smaller off- lying parcels. This form
of layout often arises where the farmer is also something of a
dealer, and takes a little grassland from another farmer to
graze a few dry stock young heifers, for example, to be sold
as down-calvers, or poor cows which he hopes to sell improved
in condition. Apart from questions of layout the practice
has its disadvantages, as a man who takes keep on another
man's place seldom attends to hedges or ditches or to the
proper maintenance of watercourses. Occasionally it is an
advantage for a man to have a field or two placed conveniently
for his business as a dealer although at a distance from his
farm, but in many cases these fields would be equally useful
and a good deal more convenient were they adjacent to his
main holding.
40 FARMS AND FARMING
Although a majority of the multiple-block farms are of the
kind described, nearly one in three of them includes two
blocks of about equal size. There are two ways in which this
kind of layout has come into being. Either the family grows
up and the farmer feels they can do with a bit more land,
or a successful smallholder wants to expand. Unless ad-
joining land is available, a scattered farm is the result. Five
of the 2-block farms are arranged in this way, the distances
between the blocks being J mile, i mile, if miles, 2^ miles,
and 2\ miles respectively. Two of the 3-block farms and the
two 5-block farms are similarly arranged. It is not a popular
plan, as much time is spent travelling between the main parts
of the farm, quite apart from occasional visits to the smaller
outlying fields.
The 6-block farm may be used as an illustration of what a
scattered holding may mean. If the farmer wanted to look
round his farm, he could start by walking over the 72 acres at
home. He would then drive half a mile and inspect the 5-acre
field ; then drive five-eighths of a mile to see 1 6 acres ; then
one and three-quarter miles to see 8 acres ; then drive a mile
and one-eighth, leave the road and walk 300 yards, to see
another 6 acres ; walk back 300 yards and drive seven-eighths
of a mile to see two fields of 12 and 14 acres, and finally driv
one and three-eighths miles hom^ a total distance travelled
from home to home of six and a quarter miles to inspect a
holding of 139 acres (Fig. 6).
Layout in relation to Roads. The area is well covered by
roads, and most of the farms are well served, though several
could be made more convenient without great difficulty.
Only three farms do not touch a public road at any point.
The condition of occupation roads, of which there are a good
many of considerable length, is generally poor, which imposes
a handicap on farm transport.
Position of Buildings. The farm-house is adjacent to the
farm buildings on 83 per cent, of the farms, 43 per cent, of
them being in or close to villages, and 40 per cent, out in the
country. For every farm which has its main buildings on a
public road there is another where they are approached by
FIG. 6.
42 FARMS AND FARMING
a road of varying length across the farm sometimes indeed
across other farms. The buildings are more or less central on
two out of every five farms, and at one corner, at one end,
or in a nearby village, on the other three.
Summary of Farm Layout. A farmer is influenced in his
choice of a farm by many factors, all of which are of im-
portance, therefore, in assessing its worth. But not all of
them come within the scope of a study of farm layout. This
discussion, for example, has concentrated upon the size,
shape, and degree of dispersal of each farm, its accessibility by
road, and the position of its buildings. The condition of the
buildings, the provision of water-supplies and electricity, the
number and position of workers' cottages have been dis-
regarded for the time being as having more to do with the
equipment of a farm than with its layout.
Two other assumptions have been made, viz. that every
holding of less than 50 acres, except those which are scattered
(of which, in this area, there are six), is sufficiently workable
to be counted convenient, and that the mere existence of a
few outlying fields is not of sufficient consequence to make
a farm, otherwise convenient, difficult to work. Further
and it is well that this should be noted this analysis has judged
the layout of the farms according to standards which prevailed
before scientific progress had pointed the way to modern
farming methods. No farm has been pilloried for failure to
give full scope for an attested herd or a combine-harvester.
Classification by the method used here reveals the follow-
ing position:
Farms where the layout is
Convenient
Inconvenient
Farms of more than 50 acres
Ring-fenced .
Scattered
No.
17
7
No.
35
20
Farms of less than 50 acres
38
6*
62
61
Inconvenient because scattered,
FARMS AND FARMING 43
On a very conservative estimate, therefore, it would seem
that not more than half the farms are convenient as they stand,
even for the kind of farming for which they were designed.
Of the farms of 50 acres and more, which cover more than
92 per cent, of the area, the layout of no less than 70 per cent,
of them is in need of improvement. This, without taking
any account of the rearrangement which would be necessary
to give full scope to modern machinery and equipment.
The more common and obvious defects of layout are :
1. Lack of compactness due to the length or irregular
shape of the farm, or to its lying in two or more parcels.
2. Long occupation roads.
3. Remoteness of some fields, due either to a long, thin
protuberance from one corner of the farm, or to inter-
section by a railway, &c.
4. Boundaries broken into by fields in other occupation, on
farms which otherwise would be well rounded off.
5. The misplacement or absence of buildings.
In short, it may be said, first, that farm layout follows no
recognizable plan ; second, that it incorporates a large measure
of inconvenience.
FARMS AND SOILS
In the foregoing section it was noted that a consider-
able proportion of farm holdings are dispersed amongst
several blocks. This alone makes it improbable that farm
boundaries would coincide at all exactly with different
kinds of soil. But the Survey discloses equally that the ring-
fenced farms rarely lie entirely on one kind of soil. The
explanation might be advanced that the farms have been laid
out deliberately to include shares of the different local soils in
each. That this is most improbable, again, may be inferred
from the number which do lie wholly on one or other of the
four kinds, for they amount to 25 per cent, of the total.
Broadly speaking, the larger the farm, the more the varia-
tion of soil, a condition which would tend to arise unaided by
planning. When, too, it is noticed that one farm of 247 acres
is all on one soil whereas another of only 99 acres spreads
44
FARMS AND FARMING
over all four, the presumption is reinforced that the relation
of farm layout to soil is largely haphazard.
TABLE IX
Farm Layout in Relation to Soil
No.
3i
59
i
Per cent, of
total number
Range of size
Farms on i soil
Farms on 2 soils .
Farms on 3 soils
Farms on 4 soils .
48
23
4
Acres
5-247
9-256
20-525
99-301
FIELDS
The Survey area contains rather more than 1,200 fields,
the size-groups and their relative importance being shown in
the following table :
TABLE x
The Fields in Size Groups
No. of fields
Per cent, of
total No.
Smaller than 10 acres .
Over 10 acres but less than
20
tt 30 ,,
50 acres
20 acres
30 ,
50
605
487
101
22
4
49-6
40-0
1-8
0-3
All fields
1219
X
lOO'O
Half the fields are less than 10 acres and only one in ten is
more than 20 acres. There is only one larger than 60 acres,
a big field of 115 acres, recently divided into five. Fields of
almost any size are to be found on any farm. Farmers of
course prefer rectangular fields, but more than 75 per cent,
of those in the area have irregular boundaries.
Except for fields inclosed almost within the last century
from commons and wastes, when the landlord or farmer was
FARMS AND FARMING 45
able to start from scratch, so to speak, and could shape his
inclosures more or less as he wished, the sizes and boundaries
of English fields were determined long ago by the men who
evolved the open arable field system. Land was ploughed in
furlongs which varied in size and shape according to the lie
of the land, drainage being the determining factor and the
ploughing laid up and down the slope. When the direction
of the slope of the surface changed, the furlong was closed
and a fresh one was started to follow the new angle. In
course of time ploughing threw the surface up into ridge and
furrow, and the big open fields became patchworks of fur-
longs, the sizes and shapes of which were dictated by topo-
graphy and convenience of access. A glance at any old map
of open fields brings this out very clearly. Upon inclosure the
obvious thing was to allot the land to its new owners in
blocks of furlongs making up the share of each, rather than
to carve out new blocks regardless of the ancient divisions
which everybody knew. Equally obvious was it that the
recipients of these allotments should partition their new
farms into fields by fences made round the old furlongs.
This caused no interference with the existing layout for
ploughing, which was obviously well designed, and the old
common ways and occupation roads gave the necessary
access. The names which many fields bear to-day can be
traced back to the names of the old open-field furlongs from
which they were formed.
Otherwise, the remoteness of so many of the fields from
the farmer's ideal of tidy rectangles is dictated by physical
features of various kinds. A watercourse, an ancient highway,
a hill, a bit of marshy ground, and, of course, such artificial
features as railway lines, new highways or old ones straight-
ened, the encroachments of building estates all of these
causes tend to result in irregular, and often inconvenient,
field boundaries.
CHAPTER IV
FARM RECONSTRUCTION
THE OWNERSHIP OF THE LAND; WATER-SUPPLIES; ELECTRIC POWER
AND LIGHT ; OUTLINES OF RECONSTRUCTION ; AN EXAMPLE.
SINCE the inclosure of the open fields there has been a good
deal of consolidation of farms, and doubtless occasional
subdivision, but there has been no systematic motive behind
the changes. They have come about through the unco-
ordinated initiative of individual farmers and landowners.
As a result there are farms, here and there, which combine
many of the characteristic features of good farm layout, but
the number which is wholly satisfactory is small indeed.
It is not to be expected that complete agreement could be
reached on what constitutes good layout, and, in fact, some
desirable features conflict. Take only the position of the
farm-house. There are obvious conveniences in having
the house on a road and near a village. On the other hand, the
convenience of having the house near the middle of the farm
is equally clear. On many farms it would be impossible to
site the house so that it could take advantage of both arrange-
ments. Thus the ideal farm layout is often a balance between
conflicting advantages rather than a realization of agreed
objectives. Although the evidence suggests that a high pro-
portion of the farms in the Survey area are badly laid out, it
would be impossible to assert that the existing arrangements
are entirely without merit. Some people, indeed, may claim
that the advantages outweigh the difficulties and dis-
advantages of reorganization.
In the first place, anyone in search of a farm should have a
wide variety of choice. Secondly, the variation of soil to be
found on almost every farm reduces the risk of crop failures
and increases the range of products which can be grown and
of the uses to which the land can be turned. Thirdly, very
few even of the poorest holdings have nothing but poor land.
Against these arguments it may be advanced that the
choice of farm open to a new-comer is limited by the number
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 47
of farms of the kind he wants which happen to be on offer at
the time. The fact that a farm has a variety of soils means
that more implements are wanted, or at least that time has
to be spent adjusting implements to the different soils to
be worked. Seeing that the soil often is not homogeneous
even throughout each field, cultivations cannot always be
done to the best advantage on the whole of a field at the same
time, and the crops may ripen irregularly. Variety of soil
leads also to multiplicity of undertakings, so that the farmer
seldom gains the skill of the specialist. Finally, nearly every
farm has sacrificed something to the holdings adjacent to it,
and even if replanning could not convert the Survey area
into one of model farms, it might bring about some very
great improvements. The fact that some readjustment of
farm boundaries has been effected, at the instigation of the
County War Agricultural Executive Committee, would indi-
cate a measure of agreement on this point. Even under the
spur of war-time necessity, however, these readjustments
have been confined to a few isolated cases, in which some
speedy improvement could be expected from a relatively
simple change. No general reorganization has been attempted,
nor probably even contemplated. A comprehensive plan
would have to take account of divergent opinions, and where
they could not be reconciled it would have to choose between
them. But before even considering the problems of replan-
ning, it would be as well perhaps to look at some of the
obstacles which any reorganization would encounter.
The two main circumstances which control the present
layout of the farms are the ownership of the land and the
adequacy of the water-supplies.
THE OWNERSHIP OF THE LAND
A general picture of the incidence of landownership in the
Survey area might best be gained, perhaps, by following an
imaginary pack of hounds running a straight-necked fox
across country from the south-western to the north-eastern
corner of the area, though the direction matters little.
48 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
Yards
First comes a run of 510 yards across a farm
rented from landlord A. Then follows landlord 510
B's farm, which is 580 yards across, but is cut in 130
two by a strip of land occupied by another owner, 170
landlord C. The next farm belongs to a college, 450
landlord D, after which follows a short run across 670
the corner of a farm owned by landlord E, who 180
lives 150 miles away. A return to landlord D's
farm for nearly J mile leads to the next farm, 400
landlord F, which, too, would give a run of nearly 270
J mile were it not cut into by the corner of a farm 30
owned by landlord G, who lives two counties off. 160
There follows a return to landlord F's farm before 220
an owner-occupier's holding is reached, landlord 160
H. The next farm, too, is occupied by its owner, 140
landlord I, and then follows a run of nearly \ mile
across landlord J's land. 830
Next comes other college land, landlord K, fol- 575
lowed by another owner-occupier, landlord L, and 800
another farm owned by college D. 370
The next is a large farm, owned by still another
college, landlord M, and then follows a series of 6 950
small farms, each belonging to a separate owner:
Landlords N 180
O 710
P 360
Q 290
R 130
S 170
There follows a farm occupied by landlord T, 100
another owned by a local resident, landlord U, 480
another occupied by its owner, landlord V, and 130
finally hounds cross a farm owned by a resident in
a town some 20 miles distant, landlord W, and
pass out of the area. 1,070
10,635
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 49
It is seen that this six-mile point crosses twenty-seven
farm boundaries and passes over twenty-three separate
properties. The longest consecutive distance on one man's
land is less than two-thirds of a mile.
Turning now to a more precise examination of the area
as a whole, it may be said that either landlords or their agents
have been identified for 1 15 farms. There are 112 individual
ownerships, varying in size from one acre to a little over a
thousand acres, as shown in Table XL
TABLE XI
The Sizes of Estates
Proportion of
Estates
No.
Acres
total acreage
Below 10 acres . . .
19
1 08)
%
8
Between 10 acres and 50 acres
34
1
50
IOO
19
1,248)
IOO
150
9
1,186
34
150
200
12
1,981)
200
250
9
1,981)
250
300
3
822}
26
300
350
2
628)
And
one of 572 ac
res
,
736
,
,
759
,
4,167
32
f
1,037
,
,
1,063
,
Total
112
13,044
IOO
The largest estate, 1,063 acres, is owned by a college, and
comprises one group of 3 farms (127, 115, and 54 acres each),
another group, also of 3 holdings (232, 87, and 15), one farm
of 397 acres in 3 separate parcels, and one small farm of
36 acres.
The next largest eatate, 1,037 acres, is also owned by a
college, and consists of one group of 2 farms (144 and 65
acres each), one farm of 108 acres with 7 more acres let to
an adjacent farm, and 2 single farms of 388 and 325 acres
respectively.
50 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
The largest acreage held in one piece by one owner amounts
to 759 acres, and consists of 3 farms (513, 205, and 41 acres),
one of which the owner farms himself.
About one-third of the area is held by the' five larger
owners, a quarter of it by fourteen owners whose estates run
between 200 and 350 acres, another third by forty owners,
each holding between 50 and 200 acres, and the remaining
8 per cent, by fifty-three owners, -none of whom owns more
than 50 acres in the Survey area.
The land is divided among the different types of landlord,
as shown in Table XII.
TABLE XII
Types of Landlord
No.
Per
cent.
Acres
Total
owned
Propor-
tion
of tota
acreage
Owned
and
farmed
Owned
and
let
Owner-occupiers
(a) who own all the land
they farm, and farm all
the land they own
(b) who farm some of their
own land and let the
rest ....
(c) who farm their own
land and rent some
more from other owners
Colleges, fife. .
Charities ....
Public bodies .
Local industrial Companies .
Private persons (other than
owner-occupiers) .
18
6
16
16
5
IS
980
467
961
998
980
1,465
961*
o/
/o
8
ii
7
40
7
7
2
2
54
36
6
6
2
2
48
2,408
098
3,826
5J9
364
241
4*698
3,4<>6
3,826
5J9
364
241
4,698
26
29
4
3
2
36
112
100
2,408
10,636 1 13,044
100
* This group rents 907 acres from other landowners shown in this table.
The most numerous class of landlord consists of private
persons, usually individuals, but sometimes trustees, and so
on, who do not farm the land which they own in this area,
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 51
though some of them farm elsewhere. Nearly half the land-
lords come into this group, and together they own just over
one-third of the area.
Next in point of numbers are the owner-occupiers, who
hold just over a quarter of the whole area. Forty fanners
fall in this group, so that rather more than one farmer in three
owns all or part of the land he farms.
Nearly 30 per cent, of the Survey area is owned by six col-
leges and the governors of an endowed school. Their land in
the area represents only a small proportion of the estates
which they own.
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners, glebes, and local chari-
ties account for 4 per cent, of the area, the County Council
and a holding described as Crown land for 3 per cent., and
two industrial companies for 2 per cent.
Of the 112 owners, eighty- three own single holdings each
of which is in a ring-fence, seven own single holdings each of
which lies in scattered parcels, and twenty-two own more
than one holding each. These last, however, rarely form
compact estates, as may be seen from the analysis given in
Table XIII of the seventy-one farms which they own.
Four of these farms are themselves divided into scattered
parcels of land, while the remaining sixty-seven lie in thirty
separate parcels. The largest number of farms lying together
and sharing the same landlord is three.
Little more need be said to show that the distribution of
the area according to the ownership of the land is kaleido-
scopic, but it may be of interest to see how this arrangement
affects the farmers. Eighty are either their own landlords or
farm under one landlord each. Twenty-five have two land-
lords, eight have three landlords, and two have four landlords.
The farms with four landlords are 153 and 145 acres respec-
tively; those with three landlords 301, 276, 149, 137, 127,
114, 26, and 22 acres. It is by no means the larger holdings
which have the most landlords.
Leaving out of account any question of whether particular
owners, or types of owners, make good or bad landlords, it is
clear that any course calling for joint action let alone
\ FARM RECONSTRUCTION
TABLE XIII
Distribution of Seventy -one Farms owned by Twenty -two
Landlords
Total
Ring-fenced farms
number of
Marching
Owner
holdings
Detached
together
Scattered farms
A
2
i
..
i
B
4
2
2
. .
C
2
2
D
8
I
| 3
i
E
4
4
..
B
F
4
2
2
G
4
I
3
H
4
I
3
, .
I
2
. .
2
. .
J
3
2
. .
i
K
3
. .
3
L
6
2
c
M
3
2
i
N
2
2
, a
3
3
P
2
, ,
2
j
Q
2
2
. .
R
2
2
, ,
S
3
3
. .
T
3
3
. .
U
3
3
V
2
2
22
71
28
39
4
replanning is likely to be exceedingly difficult where owner-
ship of the land is so multifarious. Any drainage scheme, for
example, or a water-supply, or a plan for the control of vermin,
and almost any readjustment of farm boundaries to facilitate
the better use of the land for productive purposes, will affect
the interests of several owners, some of whom may live at a
distance, and all of whom enjoy different financial standing
and may have very different ideas about what should be done.
In this area, with its high proportion of small private owners,
it is all too easy to find even ordinary works of maintenance
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 53
and repair held over because the rent of the farm is the only
source of income of an absentee landlord.
WATER-SUPPLIES
Water-bearing strata lie not far below the surface in most
parts of the area, and springs break from the hill-sides in
many places. The main watercourses and their tributaries
provide many drinking-places in the fields through which
they flow. Thus there is no shortage of water. Nevertheless
the very abundance of these cheap sources of supply has
hindered the development of less primitive and more satis-
factory systems. Many farm buildings have been sited and
fields laid out, evidently, with a view to using existing natural
supplies. The farms have been taken to the water rather than
the water to the farms.
By way of illustration little more need be said than that, of
119 farms for which information is at hand, no fewer than
seventy-three depend on streams for their field water-supplies,
nine on springs, six on ponds, four on wells, two on rain-
water collected from roofs, and ten on combinations of these
sources of supply. On eight farms water has to be carted to
the fields. Only seven farms have fields served by piped
supplies, and of these no more than three draw their water
from the mains.
Turning to the farm buildings, 43 per cent, are supplied
from wells, 32 per cent, by pipe-line, 5 per cent, by rain-
water, 3 per cent, by streams (150 yards distant in one case),
and on no fewer than 17 per cent, of the farms, including
those which have no buildings, any water which may be
required has to be fetched from the village or from some
other distant point. Nor do all of the thirty-eight homesteads
with piped supplies draw water from the mains. For many it
is piped from springs.
Two main conclusions are apparent. First, that the
positions of many of the farm-houses and farm buildings
have been determined by the luck of the divining rod rather
than because they were the most convenient for the working
of the farms. Second, that an overriding factor in deciding
54 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
whether a field can be used for live stock is whether it has
access to a stream or spring. Thus, the type of farming has
been dictated largely by the existence or absence of surface
supplies, or the ease or difficulty of tapping underground
water. It follows that any plan which aims at exploiting such
modern practices as alternate husbandry, or at the application,
even, of the ordinary rules of animal health or of milk pro-
duction as they are understood to-xiay, must wait upon the
provision of an up-to-date water-supply. In the absence of
such provision any reorganization of farm layout would be
restricted, just as the present farm layout is restricted, by the
need to conform to the primitive arrangements now prevailing.
ELECTRIC POWER AND LIGHT
Electricity has played no part, of course, such as water has,
in determining the layout of farms, but the contribution
which it should be able to make in any period of agricultural
reconstruction is very considerable.
The extent to which it has been harnessed already to the
service of the farmers of the Survey area can be summarized
in a very few words. The public supply is in use only on
nineteen farms about one in every seven. Twenty-five
farm-houses are lit by electricity, seven of them by their own
generating plants. Five farms, two of which have their own
plants, are using electric power. Only eleven farmers have
electric light in their buildings less than one in ten.
Now, the up-to-date mechanized farm is based upon an
efficient workshop, the first requirement of which is power.
Power is needed, also, in the food stores and the milking-sheds ;
lighting is essential in farm r houses, cottages, and buildings.
Thus any reconstruction of farming designed to use every-
thing that will make for efficiency in food production, and for
the greater amenity of life for those engaged in it, must make
electricity available, at a reasonable cost, for every purpose to
which it can be applied with advantage.
OUTLINES OF RECONSTRUCTION
Some measure has now been taken of the existing
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 55
arrangement of farming units in the Survey area, of how
they came to be laid out as they are, of the merits and draw-
backs of the present plan, and of the difficulties which would
impede any large measure of reform.
It is no part of this discussion to suggest that the difficulties
form an insuperable bar to progress, but it would be hard to
escape the conclusion that they would have to be circum-
vented, if not entirely removed, before the improvement of
farming could become the guiding principle of any recon-
struction of the area. Even if the aim were no higher than to
make the farms fit for the kind of farming which was in view
when they were laid out, it would have to be made possible,
by one means or another, for them to be replanned as to size
and layout according to predetermined standards, based, not
upon the geographical or financial limits of this or that estate,
nor the chance presence of some obsolete water-supply, but
upon farming needs. Unless this could be done, there would
be little hope of fundamental reform. A few buildings could
be repaired, a few farm boundaries straightened, a few oc-
cupation roads made more passable, a few fields made
ploughable, and so on. But, by and large, the end would be
as the beginning, a miscellaneous collection of haphazard
farms and fields of all shapes and sizes, largely unrelated to
soil conditions, of which something like 50 per cent, would
be needlessly difficult and uneconomic to work. If the inten-
tion were more ambitious, namely to design a farm layout
which could turn to good account the best of modern farming
methods, the need to start with a slate as clean as possible
would be the more pressing.
Assuming for the present, then, that the obstacles to re-
planning were removed, there would need to be agreement on
the principles or standards upon which it should proceed.
Should the area be one of large farms, small farms, or of farms
of all sizes ? What weight should be given to considerations
of soil ? Should the steadings be in villages or in the open
country? Should labour be drawn from villages or from
service cottages on the farms ? These questions, and others
like them, hinge too much upon opinion to admit of simple
56 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
answers. The most that can be attempted at this stage is to
clarify some of the issues and to gather up such arguments as
may appear to point in particular directions.
The essence of farming, of course, is the use of natural
resources, but the extent to which they can be developed is
governed almost entirely by economic conditions, and in so
far as these depend at any place and time upon national and
international relations, they cannot easily be predicted. In
the field of British agriculture, however, certain facts are
obvious enough. One of these, if not the first, is that labour
is leaving the land and the younger generation is not being
attracted to it. So long as Britain remains a highly industri-
alized community this trend is not likely to be reversed, though
its effects might be mitigated, perhaps, if life on the land could
be made more remunerative and its amenities improved.
Another fact is that whatever the political and economic set-
up, British agriculture has to fight its way. Its traditional
enemies are overseas agriculture and the non-agricultural
industries of the home country, and whatever help it may
receive in its struggle, the nearer it can come to standing on
its own feet the better. There is no general agreement on how
this can be achieved, but certain pointers are not lacking.
However little can be said in favour of agricultural depression,
it has this, at least, to its credit, that it throws into relief
certain features of the industry which in other circumstances
might remain hidden. For example, although a great deal of
land went out of cultivation during the inter- war depression,
no inconsiderable acreage of derelict land was actually re-
claimed during that time. And so far as the great bulk of the
land is concerned, there was no sign, even then, of any short-
age of men willing to farm. Moreover, although a great many
farmers were nearing poverty and a small proportion was
going bankrupt, there were always some who made good
livings from the land. It would seem that so long as there is
any demand at all for agricultural produce there are men who
will manage, somehow, to meet it. What class of men are
they, and how do they do it ? A great number, no doubt, are
those who simply cut their costs to a minimum by employing
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 57
semi-ranching methods. A smaller number find success in
catering for some specialized market. But there is a third
group, not numerous perhaps, but highly instructive to
observe. They are men of vigorous personality and good
organizing ability, who adopt every up-to-date scientific and
mechanical advance as it comes along. Some, indeed, they
discover for themselves. They keep their minds open, and
their methods pliable, so as not to find themselves so tied to
one plan as to be unable to give any new proposition a fair
trial.
If any lesson can be learnt from these considerations, it is
that the outlines, at least, of agricultural reconstruction need
not wait upon the hope that general economic conditions
may be settled first. They can be drawn at once, provided
that they are designed to fit a framework of certain broad
principles. These are, that full scope should be given to
modern scientific and mechanical methods, that allowance
should be made wherever possible for flexibility, that full rein
should be given to initiative and the capacity for organiza-
tion, and that provision should be made for such social and
economic conditions as may be attractive to labour.
How can these principles be applied in the Survey area?
To begin with a brief review of the natural features, here
is a stretch of some twenty-four square miles of moderately
elevated, undulating country with good natural drainage.
The soils are light rather than strong, and a fair proportion
consist of very good corn land. In times gone by these con-
ditions pointed clearly to the kind of farming which used, in
fact, to be carried on over much of the area, namely corn-
growing on the higher ground, with grazing on the steeper
slopes and in the valleys. The live stock were hurdled sheep
and bullocks. No part of the area is more than i \ miles from
a village, and there was no difficulty about the supply of
labour on which so much of the system depended.
It was a typical mixed-farming system, which relied on such
natural resources as existed, and made little or no demand on
newfangled devices. Little fault could be found with it in
the days when, unaided by the State, wheat sold for 605. a
58 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
quarter and wool fetched 2s. a lb., and when labour was to be
had in plenty at 10$. or 12.9. a week. On the same basis it
could be revived to-day. But whatever the price of produce
in the future and those which have been mentioned may
not be exorbitant nothing is more certain than that labour
of the necessary kind can never again be so plentiful, nor wages
so inadequate, as to maintain the system in solvency. Some
other plan must be found by which the uses to which the
natural features of the area can be put may be reconciled to
the economic conditions of the day, a plan sufficiently elastic,
too, to keep pace with changing needs.
It is not improbable that almost as many systems could be
found to meet these conditions as theorists to propound
them, but this need not discourage the endeavour to work
out one, if only as an illustration.
Taking the old system in its heyday as a starting-point,
it is significant that the mixture of crops and stock was not
itself the main objective. The system really revolved round
corn, the chief purpose of the live stock being to provide the
fertility with which the corn could be grown. This being so,
corn production could be retained as the predominating
interest to-day, provided that it could be carried on in-
expensively and that fertility could be maintained by some
means which did not make such heavy demands on labour as
is made by penning sheep or by carting and spreading dung.
So far as the corn-growing is concerned, the intensified use of
modern mechanical equipment is clearly indicated, while for
fertility the use of leys and artificial fertilizers might be
extended, with or without the introduction of movable
milking bails, or folded pigs and poultry.
How would these methods fit in with the principles which
have been enunciated ?
There is little doubt that mechanized arable farming, if
undertaken on a scale large enough, gives full play to initiative
and organizing ability. It demands, too, the exercise of
scientific knowledge in matters such as the control of diseases
and pests and the use of fertilizers. Incidentally, it may be
suspected that the reliance of the old-fashioned farmer upon
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 59
the sheep-fold, and the nostalgia for it which still prevails, is
founded, partly at least, upon the fact that the sheep gave
him a ready-made manure applied direct where he wanted it,
while he lacked the knowledge essential to the choosing,
mixing, and application of artificials. Whatever the truth of
this, it cannot be denied that the need for up-to-date tech-
nical knowledge would offer plenty of scope in modern corn
production for the best brains which the industry could
command.
Nor would such a system, with its minimum of permanent
equipment, fail on the score of flexibility. If the emphasis to
begin with were upon corn, it could be shifted at any time at
the dictates of changing fortune. One of the pioneers of
modern farming, Mr. A. J. Hosier, began his system of milk
production with the travelling milking bail on permanent
grassland, at a time when corn prices were depressed. When
the Wheat Act was passed in 1932, and corn-growing became
once more profitable, the grassland, with its stored-up fer-
tility, was ploughed for corn cropping, and temporary grass
leys were laid down for the dairy herds. In the reverse case,
with corn once more unprofitable, the leys could be length-
ened, the production of industrial crops such as flax and
sugar-beet could be increased, or, if necessary, the arable
land could once more be diminished, leaving milk, pork, and
poultry to take their turns. Thus those who worked the
system would take advantage of economic changes instead of
being defeated by them.
Finally, the system holds out better prospects for labour
than could be expected from many others. It would afford
ample opportunities for mechanics and technicians who
valued an open-air life, whose technical knowledge would
entitle them to wages more or less comparable with those of
their opposite numbers in other industries, and whose skill
with mechanical contrivances would increase the volume of
their output so much as to make it possible for the industry
to pay those wages. Milking by bail machines, the use of trac-
tors, combine-harvesters, and the like, would step up the out-
put per man to a plane where good wages could be afforded.
60 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
Some such reorganization would appear to promise success,
at any rate so far as concerns the lighter soils which form the
bulk of the Survey area. There remain the heavier soils and
the wetter ground in the valleys. That these could play no
direct part in the system need not debar them from sharing
in its benefits. Those that fell within the boundaries of the
bail-milking farms could profitably be used for dry cows,
for isolation paddocks, and also for raising heifers, an activity
in which other parts of the area could join. This would still
leave room for specialist pig and poultry keepers, fruit-
growers, and so on.
The plan is advanced, not as the only one, or even as the
best that could be recommended, but as a background against
which to see more clearly some of the problems of recon-
struction. Let it be supposed that this plan, or something
like it, were in view, what changes of farm layout would be
involved ?
Take, first, the relation of farm to soil. It has been seen
that the present layout takes virtually no account of soil
differences, and that on many farms this cannot be avoided.
Although it is common knowledge that a farmer's preference
is for a uniform soil, and of course a good one, it is probable
that, in an area where soils are so variable, little can be done
beyond securing that the belts of soil suitable for arable
cultivation are earmarked for that purpose, while the land
which is difficult to plough is set aside for grass and orchards.
Even this would show some advance on the present rather
patchwork arrangement, by which so many small farmers are
compelled to keep land under grass which is naturally suited
for ploughing, so that they may have somewhere to run their
stock, while others, with farms where grass is the appropriate
crop, have to keep some land under the plough, largely in
order to grow roots and straw. It may be noticed in passing
that this defect of the present layout has become more ob-
vious under war-time conditions, when the authorities, in order
to avoid asking more of some men than of others, have had to
order the ploughing of some fields which would be better in
grass, while leaving others in grass which should be ploughed.
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 61
Next, consider the size of farm. Although the early belief
that mechanized farming demanded very wide expanses is
being modified in the light of experience, there can be no
doubt that the present size of farm 109 acres on average,
with more than 75 per cent, of the holdings smaller than 150
acres is a good deal too small for good use to be made
of modern equipment. A medium-sized combine-harvester
will get through some 200 acres of corn in a season. Assuming
this to occupy about two-thirds of the arable land, 300 acres
of ploughland would be indicated. If a full-sized milking
bail were to be run as well, an additional 150 acres or so of
leys, or rather more of permanent grass, would be needed.
Presumably, therefore, the typical farm on this class of land
would be not less than about 450 acres, and could, of course,
be larger. Elsewhere there would be smaller farms, the sizes
of which could vary within any limits which allowed them to
be fitted conveniently between the main mechanized holdings.
The layout of fields offers more scope for differences of
opinion, but the majority would agree that the present size
10 acres on average, and 50 per cent, of them smaller than
this is unnecessarily small. Some reformers, no doubt,
would advocate an almost complete sweeping away of hedges,
in imitation of other areas where combines and milking bails
range over broad reaches of rolling country. This would not
be supported by those who know the area, and whose ex-
perience has taught them the value of shelter for crops and
stock. Local opinion seems to favour a field of about 20 acres
as being large enough for modern equipment while not too
large to have shelter. Where possible, the fields should be
rectangular, running north and south, and bounded by good
hedges. Smaller divisions needed from time to time for
grazing could be made with electric fencing or temporary
barbed wire. Whatever may be said in favour of having
variety of soil on a farm, there is nothing to recommend
variety of soil in a field. So far as may be practicable, there-
fore, account should be taken of soil divisions.
Turning now to the steadings, reference has been made to
the difficulty of securing the siting which is the best in all
62 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
respects. Few farms, for example, can enjoy the advantages
of having a steading which is both central to the farm and is
also near a village. Some guidance here is furnished by local
preferences. It is found in this area that, other things equal,
competition is always at its keenest for farms with steadings
on a road, and near, but not in, a village. It is of less im-
portance that the buildings should be central, though if they
are, so much the better. When the reconstruction here
pictured comes to be examined in more detail, it may well be
found possible, with the larger, and therefore the fewer,
farms which would result, to meet these conditions on a
higher proportion of farms than is possible with the present
layout.
It is generally agreed that the house should be near the
farm buildings, and with fully mechanized farms weight will
be added to this arrangement, because the farmer will want
not only to be at hand to keep his eye on ailing beasts and so
on, as he does now, but also to direct the workshops, stores,
offices, and the like which will make ihe modern steading
more than ever the hub of a sizeable business.
The design of the farm buildings would call for special
consideration. Many of the present buildings would become
superfluous owing to the rearrangement and enlargement of
the farms, and it would be a matter of relative cost and' ex-
pediency to make use of others which happen to fit the new
plan. Few of the main steadings would be adequate for
modern needs as they stand, and nearly all are ill-arranged
for economy of labour. Some might be sufficiently improved
by carefully planned alterations and additions, but the solid
construction of many of them would make it as difficult to
bring them up to date as would the dilapidated condition of
others. In the long run, there can be little doubt that a fresh
start would be the only really satisfactory course. In that
event, great care should be taken to avoid the mistakes of the
past, especially the mistake of building too well. If the systems
of farming are to be flexible, so should be the steadings.
Solid structures are not only expensive to build, but they are
difficult to convert when needs change. It is possible, as has
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 63
been suggested by Mr. Clyde Higgs, that a plan as good as
any would be to have walls supporting one large roof, with
movable partitions under the covered space.
There remains the most important of all considerations,
that of labour, upon which hangs every proposal for the
reconstruction of farming.
Some mention of wages has been made already, and it has
been seen that the plan of reconstruction would make for
higher rates. This alone, however, could not be expected to
call forth enough labour of the kind required, because it is
not only the discrepancies between wage-rates in agriculture
and in other industries that draw men away from the country-
side. There is also the relative absence in the country of the
ordinary comforts and amenities of modern life. What is the
position at present?
In an area such as the Survey area, which contains a village
every few miles, it is natural that many of the farm workers
should live in the villages, and some idea of living conditions
in them will be gained from other sections of this report.
Some of the single men, too, lodge with the farmers for whom
they work. But under the traditional farming system, here,
as in most parts of the country, there are many others, mostly
the key-men that is, cowmen, shepherds, and carters who
live on the farms in tied cottages.
There are 123 farms in the area, and forty-one of them,
one in three, possess one or more tied cottages. As there are
eighty-two of these altogether, there is an average of two tied
cottages for every three farms in the area, or two for each
farm on which there are cottages. The largest number of
cottages on any one farm is five, and these are on a 325-acre
holding.
Thus, although the tied cottage is the recognized way of
providing house-room for many farm workers, 45 per cent,
of the land in the Survey area makes no such provision.
Moreover, at the present time, only forty-five of the eighty-
two tied cottages, or little more than one-half, are let to men
working on the farms. That this reflects the decline in the
demand for labour, as arable land went out of cultivation and
64 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
men were replaced by machines, is true, of course, but it is by
no means the whole truth. It must not be supposed that the
cottages no longer occupied by farm workers are all let to men
who work in other industries, for several of them are standing
empty. This is not so much because they are dilapidated or
insanitary, though some have become so through disuse, as
because they are remote and inaccessible. One of the best
cottages in the area, certainly the fcest in its own parish, is on
a farm which has been kept in a high state of cultivation, on
which the farmer has always been able to offer employment
to a good man. Yet the cottage has been unoccupied for
nearly thirty years because it stands out in the fields, 300
yards from the road, and this is but one example of many.
TABLE XIV
Farms and Tied Cottages
No. of
farms
No. of
cottages
Total area
of farms
Average
size
Farms
Without tied cottages
With tied cottages
82
4i
o
82
Acres
6,022
7,355
%
45
55
Acres
73
175
123
82
13,377
IOO
109
The inaccessibility of farm cottages is not only a matter of
muddy boots and of distances from shops or schools, but
also of the prohibition it imposes on conveniences generally.
In a recent survey which inquired into the water and elec-
tricity services of the district, the idea that these ordinary
conveniences might be available to the farm cottages was
thought to be so improbable that they were not even included
in the investigation.
Faced with the position which is disclosed in the Survey
area, it is clear beyond any argument that plans for the
rehabilitation of agriculture must contemplate an almost
complete rehousing of farm workers.
Looked at exclusively from an agricultural point of view,
the importance of having the worker near his work is para-
FARM HOUSES
MODERN STEADINGS
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 65
mount. A farm of any size, especially one with a considerable
head of live stock, is a place where emergencies continually
arise without warning. There is no need to catalogue them ;
they vary from accidents and sickness amongst the animals to
breakdowns of machines or to overheated ricks, and they need
immediate attention from skilled men. The system of tied
cottages grew up in answer to this need, and it was accepted by
master and man alike as natural and inevitable. On the whole,
too, it has worked a great deal better than many people care
to admit, especially those who look at farming from a distance.
Nevertheless, there is something distasteful about a system
which allows a man with a family and few resources to find
himself without a home as a result of some trivial disagree-
ment with his employer, and it is clear that the time will soon
come, if indeed it be not now, when agricultural employment
must be relieved of this risk. Many workers have already
found one solution by leaving the land, and it will be of little
avail to retain the old system if it only result in empty cot-
tages. Until recently, if the fertility of a farm seemed to
demand a flock of sheep, for example, it was only the sheep
that the farmer had to consider. There would be no difficulty
in finding shepherds prepared to accept the social and
domestic conditions provided. This state of affairs no longer
prevails, and it is more than probable that the choice in
future will lie between abolishing the system of service
tenancies and having no labour at all. To put it on the lowest
grounds, the economic interests of the farm are no longer
served by a system which shows such disregard of the workers'
interests and social conditions.
In the modern community the solution should not be
difficult. In fact, with a telephone and a motor bicycle, the
workman of the future, living a mile or two away amongst his
friends in the village, may yet be nearer to his work than was
his predecessor living in isolation in a cottage on the farm.
Given these means of communication, it becomes possible to
meet the very moderate preferences of the workers and their
families for some community life, without injuring the work
of the farm. In any event, it is surely easier to transport a
66 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
single breadwinner to his work than to transport his wife to
the shops and his children to school. The alternative, namely
to leave his wife and children to make their own way to the
places where they must go, is no longer open. They have
already found their way, and there they propose to stay. It is
doubtful whether any inducement could be offered which
would bring them back, in any numbers, to their cottages on
the farms, and tied cottages at that.
The plan will be, then, to house the workers in the villages
or towns, where they should be able to draw water from taps,
where gas and electricity should be available for cooking and
light, where the roads are metalled, and the bus passes the
door. The key-men will ride to and from their work on motor
bicycles or in small cars, while the other men will be picked
up each morning by the farm motor-van and taken home
again at night as is done already, as a matter of course, in
some of the more intensively farmed areas of the country.
If it be objected that the plan will involve a good deal of
house-building, the answer is that the house-building will
be needed in any event. If it were attempted to retain the
tied-cottage system, at least for the stockmen, the fact must
be faced that the number of men willing to risk their roof
with their job is steadily diminishing. If the standard of
farming is to be maintained, therefore, and good men attracted
to it, tied cottages in the reconstructed country-side will have
to be built near the steadings, where there will be a chance of
providing them with modern conveniences, and it will be
necessary, also, to have so many additional houses in the
villages that a man who left his job on the farm would be sure
of suitable accommodation elsewhere. In the long run, it is
only on this condition that he would be willing to take a tied
cottage, and it could not be assured unless there were more
cottages than families.
This, then, is an example of the kind of reconstruction of
which agriculture stands in need, and of its implications.
It may appear to be ambitious, and to some, no doubt, almost
Utopian. But it is doubtful whether any scheme involving
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 67
less change could ensure the efficiency of the farming of the
area and the contentment of those upon whom it would
depend for success.
AN EXAMPLE
There are 123 farms falling within the Survey area, and a
glance at the figure on the following page shows how
they are laid out to-day (Fig. 7). Assuming that the efficiency
of agricultural production be the sole object in view, the
essentials of a planned layout of the Survey area would be
these :
1. The holdings should be compact, accessible, and con-
venient to work.
2. The ploughland should be in one piece, and with as
little soil variation as possible.
3. Farms should be large enough to admit of mechanical
cultivation, from which it follows that:
4. Severally, they should be about 450 acres and upwards
in size.
Whatever the layout adopted, it is hardly to be expected
that all these requirements could be met on every farm, and a
glance at the map which shows the variations in the surface
soils an^i the run of the roads (see p. 26) is evidence of the need
for compromise. Many plans could be drawn, but one which
goes a long way towards incorporating the more valuable
features of a good layout is illustrated in Fig. 8 and is referred
to, subsequently, as Plan I. Such a plan could be achieved
only at the expense of a great deal of disturbance not only of
occupiers but also of owners. This does not destroy its value,
however, as something to be kept in view as an indication of
the direction in which reforms should move.
Most of the farms shown on the plan (Fig. 8) are roughly
square or rectangular, shapes which make for compactness.
Most of them, again, are traversed by metalled roads. The
main soil divisions are respected to the extent that the plough-
able land on almost every farm has a great preponderance of
one kind of soil, and enough of it lying together to allow
the use of up-to-date machinery. At the same time the farms
FARM BOUNDARIES, 1940
FIG. 7.
FARM BOUNDARIES RE-PLANNED
(I) WITHOUT REGARD TO
EXISTING ESTATE BOUNDARIES
N
Land for smallholdings, aUotmcats, c.
FIG. 8.
70 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
are not rigidly uniform in size or type ; they vary from about
800 acres down to 300 acres, and three areas are reserved in
the vicinity of villages for smallholdings, allotments, and
accommodation land. Not counting these last, the whole area,
as replanned, would contain some twenty-eight farms,
averaging a little over 450 acres each, as compared with the
present layout which comprises 123 farms averaging 109
acres.
To facilitate more detailed examination and description of
the proposals, a central block of between 4,000 and 5,000
acres in the Survey area has been taken. It consists at
present of twenty-three farms averaging 120 acres, and parts
of twenty-five other farms. The new layout combines them
into eight farms, and provides also for three groups of small-
holdings, as shown in Fig. 9.
The average size of the farms, excluding smallholdings,
is 521 acres, ranging from a large arable farm of 654 acres to a
small grazing farm of 397 acres. Four of them are mainly
arable, three are mixed, and the eighth is the grazing
farm.
Three of the four mainly arable farms have their plough-
lands in large, single blocks mostly of one kind of soil, and
amounting to 87, 70, and 91 per cent, of their total acreages,
respectively. The fourth has 67 per cent, of its area in two
large and one small block of good ploughing.
The three mixed farms have 37, 50, and 52 per cent,
respectively of their acreages in arable land, lying, almost all
of it, in a single block in each.
The grazing farm is mostly on the heavy side some 66 per
cent, of it but this is relieved by substantial patches of dry-
lying land dispersed over the farm.
Details of the shape, size, and surface soil of each farm are
given in Table XV.
As to access, seven of the eight farms have good roads
running across them. The eighth is not so well served, but the
good road along one side is probably sufficient for this mainly
grass farm. No part of any farm, with the same exception, is
more than three-quarters of a mile from a hard road.
(I) EIGHT FARMS RE-PLANNED
n
FARM RECONSTRUCTION
TABLE XV
Details of eight Farms and three Smallholding Areas (Plan I)
Farm
Shape and approxi-
mate size
Type of farm
Acreage
Acres
A
Rectangular.
A light-land
i. A large block of
ij by J mile
arable farm
arable, consisting
of: Sandy soils
400
Limestone soils
159
2. A patch of iron-
stone loams
12
3. Interspersed among
the sandy soils
there are patches
of heavy loam
83
654
B
Nearly square.
A mixed farm
i. A block of heavy
i by I mile
with good
grazing
loams and clays
2. A belt of dry-lying
327
ironstone loam at
one side
152
3. A patch of similar
*
soil in middle of
farm
28
4. Three small patches
of sand
9
5i6
C
Nearly square.
A mixed farm
i. A block of sandy
i by I mile
soils
280
2. A block of heavy
loams and clays
296
3. Small patches of
limestone soils
14
4. A small patch of
ironstone loam
3
593
D
Nearly square.
A mainly arable
i. A block of sandy
t by I mile
farm
soils
324
2. A belt of heavy
loam along one
side
140
464
E
Nearly square.
An arable farm
i. A block of sandy
J by I mile
soils
152
2. Two belts of iron-
stone loams lying
I !J I
either side of i.
72
3. A small block of
heavy loam
36
421
FARM RECONSTRUCTION
73
Farm
Shape and approxi-
mate size
Type of farm
Acreage
Acres
F
Triangular,
if by mile
A mainly graz-
ing farm
i. A large block of
heavy loams and
clays
262
2. Seven patches of
sand interspersed
in i.
86
3. A small block of
ironstone loam
49
397
G
Square,
A mixed farm
i. A block of iron-
i by i mile
stone loam
242
2. A block of heavier
loam and clay
270
3. A patch of sand in
middle of 2
49
561
H
Nearly square.
i by i mile
An arable farm
i. Two large blocks
of ironstone loam
\20I
Ji48
2. A large block of
heavier loam and
clay
134
3. A small detached
block of ironstone
loam
29
4. A similar block of
heavy loam
54
566
4,173
Smallholdings,
Round village
allotments,
i. A block of sandy
&c.
soil
56
2. A patch of iron-
stone loam
13
3. Two patches of
heavy loam
6
75
tt
Round village
i. A block of sandy
soils
50
2. Another similar
37
3. A block of heavy
loam
ii
98
n
Alongside village
i. A block of iron-
stone loam
44
2. Two patches of
heavy loam
6 50
4,395
74 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
As regards the main steadings, there are well-placed houses
and buildings on four of the eight farms (see Fig. 9). On three
others there are good steadings, though they are not so con-
veniently sited as they might be. There is no steading on the
eighth farm, but this is the grazing farm, and being near a
village it could be worked from there. Alternatively, there is
a good site on the farm where a new steading could be built.
Thus, on farm A there is a good steading, nearly central to
the farm, on a good road.
On farm B there is a choice between three existing stead-
ings, one in a village at one side of the farm, another on a road
at the other side, and a third which is central to the arable
land and 600 yards from a road. Alternatively, there is an
almost central site on a good road where a new steading could
be built.
On farm C there is a choice between a steading which now
stands 400 yards from the road and a new one to be built on a
central site on the road.
On farm D there is a similar choice.
On farm E a steading exists in the village, central to one
side of the farm.
On farm F a new steading would be needed, unless one
in a village about one-third of a mile from the farm were used.
On farm G there is a good steading on the outskirts of a
village, central to the farm and on a good road.
On farm H there is a steading as on farm G.
Modern farms of 500 acres or so would need more accom-
modation than is provided by the existing steadings, most of
which to-day serve much smaller farms. Moreover, as was
mentioned earlier, it is by no means certain that much would
be saved in the long run by trying to make use of buildings
which are out of date, particularly in the way in which they
squander labour. Completely new steadings, lightly con-
structed and capable of easy conversion to meet changing
conditions, -might not only be more suitable but might even
turn out to be cheaper in the end. It must be recognized,
however, that many people might prefer to make use of
existing buildings, at any rate to the extent of using them as
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 75
the nucleus round which new workshops, garages, stores,
and offices could be added as required. Were it decided to
retain steadings which now lie off hard roads, they would be
made a great deal more convenient by metalling or concreting
the occupation roads and fencing them, so as to lighten trans-
port and to avoid the continual opening and closing of gates
with the attendant risks of straying live stock.
This, then, is an example of how a rationalized layout
might work out in practice. It takes no account of the diffi-
culties which stand in the way of reorganization, but it shows
merely the sort of results that might be expected from the
application of the principles which emerged from the fore-
going discussion, in which the economic efficiency of agri-
culture was given precedence over other considerations.
Looked at solely from that point of view, there can be little
doubt that the new farms mark a great advance on the present
layout. The typical farm is large enough to provide scope for
the man of ability and initiative, yet not so large as to make
his duties of organization and supervision burdensome. Its
size, too, justifies the full use of modern machinery and
equipment, not only for field operations but also for stationary
work, thus avoiding the dilemma of the small farmer who has
to choose between doing without mechanization or buying
machines which he cannot fully employ. Then, again, the
arable fields march together, and as their soils are much of the
same kind, the cultivation policy and the equipment for carry-
ing it out would be standardized for the farm. A unit of
this size, too, enjoys the advantages that come from buying
requisites in bulk, and it would afford whole-time secretarial
and accounting work for a clerk and storekeeper.
There would be great savings of time and energy. The
work in hand would not be held up while a broken part was
taken to town to wait its turn to be repaired. The farm would
have its own well-equipped central workshops, and the
machinery would be in charge of the farm fitter, who would
see to it that there were no avoidable breakages, and that
urgent repairs were given priority. There would be much less
coming and going than on many smallejXDjSt ill-arranged
76 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
farms; every job would be within easy reach, and a man sent
to stop a small gap in a hedge would not be gone for the rest
of the day.
These are some of the economic implications of the plan,
and they are all on the credit side. The social effects are
perhaps less clear-cut.
Even allowing a reasonable number of smallholdings, the
plan implies a gradual reduction of some 60 per cent, in the
number of farms, with a corresponding reduction, of course,
in the number of farmers. Presumably this would happen
only as the present generation gave up and farms could be
thrown together, but in the end many men who would have
become their own masters under the old arrangements would
have to forgo this privilege under the new. The larger farms
would offer responsible, if subsidiary, posts, however, which
would be well paid and generally more attractive than the
prospects for most of the small, struggling, individualist
farmers. It cannot be claimed, however, that the change
would represent nothing but gain, and it is a matter of opinion
where the balance of advantage rests.
So far as the farm workers are concerned, there would be
nothing but gain. Their numbers might not be so great as of
those who could find employment under a policy of small-
holdings and manual labour, but the openings for cutting
down waste of time and effort, for introducing labour-saving
machinery and for skill in handling it, would render each
man's work more productive and therefore better paid. And
apart from wages it is fundamental to the plan that it should
include an almost revolutionary improvement in the amenities
of village life.
Turning to the position of the landowners, great changes
would be called for if the plan were to be carried through
exactly as drawn, and so long as agricultural efficiency
were the prime motive it is difficult to see how to avoid a
great deal of disturbance. The multiplicity of ownerships,
together with the lack of correlation between the boundaries
of properties and the factors which make for good, modern
farms, has been shown to be a major obstacle in redesigning
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 77
a satisfactory layout. Further, so long as engrossment of
farms remained a part of the plan, as in this area it surely
must, the landowners could not avoid being greatly affected.
It is not inconceivable that some method could be found by
which the owners of the several holdings which, when thrown
together, might constitute one of the larger farms on the new
plan, could continue as owners of their original properties.
One of their number, or a small committee of them, might be
given executive powers to carry out the duties of the whole
body. The remainder, however, would lose many of their
privileges and most of their responsibilities, and would merely
receive the net rent of that proportion of the farm which
occupied their land. Some of their capital in buildings no
longer needed would be lost, while the new capital required
for new buildings would bring in smaller returns, as rents
presumably would be lower.
There is one class of landowner who would be much more
seriously affected, namely the small owner-occupier who is so
characteristic of the Survey area. He might continue as owner
in the modified way described, but it would be very excep-
tional for him to be able to remain as an occupier.
Unless the execution of the plan were to be postponed
until existing owners parted with their interests in the or-
dinary course which would be to defer action indefinitely
it would seem that disturbance of some kind must be faced.
Would it be possible, without detracting too much from the
advantages of the scheme, to lessen the disturbance by
drawing the boundaries of the new farms in a way such that
no owner would have his land partitioned more than it is
already ? In other words, could each new farm be planned so
as to consist of a group of properties, the owners of which
would be the composite landlord of the new farm ? If such a
plan were to result in something less than the maximum of
farming efficiency, it would at least avoid the maximum
of disturbance of landowners.
Whether a compromise of this kind could be effected in
any particular area or not, would depend very largely on the
size and layout of the several properties, and for that reason
FARM BOUNDARIES RE-PLANNED
(U) WITHOUT DISTURBING
EXISTING ESTATE BOUNDARIES
g- Land -for Smallholdings, allotments, ftc.
FIG. to.
(ID SEVEN FARMS RE-PLANNED
Z
8o
FARM RECONSTRUCTION
it would be a matter of chance. As a general proposition,
therefore, a great deal more information would be needed
than is provided by this Survey. But so far as the Survey area
itself is concerned, an attempt has been made to draw up a
plan on this basis, and the result, which is referred to as
Plan II, is shown in Fig. 10. For detailed comparison with
the agricultural efficiency Plan I,F ig.8, seven of the farms are
shown on a larger scale in Fig. 'n. These cover an area
which corresponds as nearly as possible with the eight farms
of Plan I, Fig. 9.
Each of the farms in Plan II would comprise several pro-
perties (shown in Table XVI), but none of their boundaries
would cut across the boundary of an estate.
TABLE XVI
Estates Comprised in Seven Specimen Farms (Plan II)
Farm
No. of landowners
Owner-occupiers
Other
Total
T
2
i
3
U
O
2
2
V
I
8
9
W
5
4
9
X
I
5
6
Y
o
3
3
Z
i
5
6
The number of landowners concerned with each farm
would vary from two on farm U to nine on farms V and W,
the awkward shapes of these two farms being due to the
awkward shapes of some of the component properties. As in
Plan I (Fig. 9), areas are available for smallholdings and
allotments, the land set apart for these being owned by seven
landlords.
The plan shows that in this area a farm layout on lines
which take account of the various ownerships is at least
possible. Whether it would involve too substantial a sacrifice
of the other principles of planning those based entirely on
agricultural efficiency is not easy to judge, but the following
comparison between the two plans throws some light on the
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 81
question. Table XVII gives particulars of Plan II, corre-
sponding to Table XV for Plan I (pp. 72-3).
TABLE XVII
Shape and approxi-
Acreage
Farm
mate size
Type of farm
Acres
T
Roughly square.
A light land,
i. A large block of
J by J mile
arable farm
sand
3i7
2. Interspersed among
the sandy soils
there are 8 pockets
of heavy loam
55
372
U
L-shaped.
A mixed farm
i. A large block of
i by i miles
ironstone loam
I9S
2. A block of heavy
loam
151
3. Two patches of
sand (36, 3)
39
4. A small patch of
ironstone loam
12
397
V
An irregular,
A mixed farm
i. A large block of
inverted T.
ironstone loam
323
i i by i miles
2. Two small blocks
of the same (79, 15)
94
3. A block of heavy
loam
158
4. Four other blocks
of the same (62, 55,
i and i)
119
5. One patch of sand
6
700
w
An irregular rect-
A mainly arable
i. A large block of
angle.
farm
sandy soils
330
i by ij miles
2. Three other blocks
of sandy soils (60,
13, i 2 )
85
3. A large block of
heavy loam
204
4. Three patches of
the same (24, 8,
and 2)
34
5. A block of iron-
stone loam
161
6. A patch of the same
10
824
X
A blunt-ended tri-
An arable farm
i. A block of iron-
angle.
stone loam
142
| by i mile
2. A patch of the same
7
3. A block of sandy
soil
128
4. Two patches of
heavy loam (35, 23)
58
335
FARM RECONSTRUCTION
Farm
Shape and approxi-
mate size
Type of farm
Acreage
Acres
Y
An irregular rect-
A mixed farm
i. A block of iron-
angle.
stone loam
150
i by 2 miles
2. A large block of
heavy loam
366
3. 6 patches of sand
scattered among
'
No. 2 (48, 44, 31,
1 8, 7, and 4)
152
668
Z
An irregular square,
i by ii miles
A mainly arable
farm
i. A large block of
ironstone loam
190
2. A smaller block of
the same
103
3. A small patch of
the same
10
4. A block of heavy
loam
1 06
5. A smaller block of
the same
23
6. One patch of sand
15
3,743
Smallholdings ,
allotments,
Alongside village
A block of sand
26
&c.
M
Alongside village
i. A block of iron-
stone loam
131
2. A patch of clay
6.
137
Alongside village
i. A patch of sand
22
2. A patch of clay
17
3. A patch of iron-
stone loam
IO
49
3,955
Shape and Size of Farms. So far as shape is concerned, no
more than a glance at the two maps (Figs. 9 and 1 1) is needed
to show that Plan I makes for more convenient farms. They
are more symmetrical, and free from the indentations and
protuberances which are unavoidable features of the farm
boundaries in Plan II.
As to size, there is little to choose between the two plans.
In Plan I the farms range from 397 acres to 654 acres,
FARM RECONSTRUCTION 83
averaging 521 acres. In Plan II they range from 335 to 824,
averaging 535 acres. In each, the arable land is parcelled out
so as to provide adequate scope for mechanical cultivation on
nearly every farm.
Soils. It has been pointed out that, so far as is possible,
the arable land of a farm should be of one kind and it should
all lie together. Each of the two plans provides four arable,
or mainly arable, farms. Two farms in Plan I have all their
arable land of one kind and in one piece, another has 92 per
cent, of it so, and only the fourth has so little as 61 per cent,
in one piece. In Plan II, on the other hand, only one farm has
all of its arable land in one piece.
Similarly, each plan provides three mixed farms, and it is
seen again that the arrangement of the arable land on the
farms in Plan I is better than it is on those in Plan II.
Taking all the farms together, Plan I disposes of 88 per
cent, of the arable land in single blocks of homogeneous soil,
the corresponding proportion in Plan II being only 67 per
cent.
Access. It was noticed earlier that the area is well served
by roads, so that it should be possible in almost any reasonable
plan to avoid leaving fields excessively remote. Plan II, how-
ever, is rather less satisfactory in this connexion than Plan I.
Steadings. Either plan offers a wide choice of existing
steadings, and good sites for new ones if they were preferred.
Summarizing the comparison between the two plans, it is
clear that from the point of view of farming efficiency Plan I
is to be preferred. On the score of convenience of working
and of access it shows some advantage over Plan II, and on
the much more important score of economical and efficient
cultivation it is a long way ahead. There can be no doubt
that, even in an area of small properties such as this, which
gives considerable latitude in the drawing of new farm boun-
daries without cutting across ownership boundaries, it is
impossible to preserve intact the purely agricultural principles
of planning and at the same time to respect existing estate
boundaries.
84 FARM RECONSTRUCTION
Whether some compromise such as that which is illustrated
here would be possible or desirable on a comprehensive scale
is again a matter of opinion. All that can be said is that, so
far as this example goes, there is a conflict between maximum
farm efficiency and private interests in property which cannot
be ignored.
CHAPTER V
RURAL INDUSTRIES
AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES : Smiths. NON- AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES :
Ironstone ; Stone Quarrying ; Brewing ; Plush.
AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES
IN the Survey area agricultural industries are badly repre-
sented. A small hurdle-making business is carried on just
outside the boundary of the area, but there is too little wood-
land to sustain woodland enterprises, and, apart from the non-
agricultural industries described below, the only activities are
those of a few village tradesmen, blacksmiths, wheelwrights,
and saddlers, serving the farms.
Sixty years ago the industrial life of the area was better
balanced, before the agricultural depression and changes in
the organization of British industry had combined to make
many little local enterprises obsolete. Every village had a
working water-mill, and some had two, but with one exception
they are now derelict or converted to other purposes. Every
village, too, had at least one blacksmith, and in the larger ones
there were saddlers and wheelwrights. Other trades or in-
dustries represented were maltsters, coopers, stonemasons,
thatchers, and builders' men of every kind. The shoe-
maker, that is to say the man who made boots and shoes
as distinct from those, to-day, who hand them out ready made
over the counter, was ubiquitous, and there were one or two
tailors. 1
The turn-over from ploughland to grass in the last fifty
years, and, more recently, the displacement of horses by the
motor-car on the road and by the tractor on the farm, have
almost eliminated the saddler. The wheelwright, too, has
suffered loss of trade. Carts and wagons have been displaced,
to some extent, by trailers and lorries, but these are well
within the scope of the village wheelwright, and the reason of
1 Information from Kelly's Directories.
86 RURAL INDUSTRIES
his decline is the increasing competition of factory products.
It is impossible to avoid regretting the loss of local tradition
in the construction and character of wagons and carts, pro-
duced by the finest craftsmanship and decorated with con-
siderable artistic taste, for which the uniformity of the mass-
produced lorry can never compensate. It serves its purpose
and it is cheap, but village society is the poorer by the loss of
the craftsmen whom it has put out of business.
Smiths. The smiths were the most numerous class in this
category, and at one time it seemed that the motor would make
them, too, almost obsolete. In the yillages of the Survey area
their numbers have fallen from sixteen to three during the last
fifty years. Those who remained were making livings with diffi-
culty by turning their skill to the production of wrought iron
work and luxury goods. Recently, however, it has been realized
that with the rapid increase in the use of machinery of all
kinds on the farm, there is a great opening for the black-
smith's shop, modernized both in its equipment and in the
training of its staff, to deal with its repair. Through the
Rural Industries Committee of the County Rural Community
Council, and its organizer, classes of instruction in oxy-
acetylene welding and in tractor repairs have been arranged
for blacksmiths, and through a Loan Equipment Fund ad-
ministered by the National Council of Social Service, con-
siderable sums have been advanced to them for the purchase
of modern tools and machines.
Advantage has been taken of these facilities in the Survey
area by the three remaining smiths, who realize the great
opening offered by the increasing mechanization of farming.
The handicap, at present, is the congestion in shops which
now are called upon to accommodate large machines brought
in for overhaul, for which they were never designed. There
are still horses to be shod, too, and the shake-out amongst
the farriers has gone further than the substitution of
machinery on the farm justifies. At the moment, it is
probable that shoeing-smiths are more in demand in the
Survey area than mechanics. The reason of the shortage
is economic. There is no accepted scale of charges for
RURAL INDUSTRIES
Above: Blacksmith's shop and yard. Below: Stone quarrying
IRONSTONE WORKS
RURAL INDUSTRIES 87
shoeing, and price-cutting has killed the trade. Young men
want something better than a mere subsistence wage 'for
scrambling about under a horse all day'.
Here, at all events, is one rural industry which may adapt
itself to the conditions of modern usage ; it may safely be con-
jectured that the village blacksmiths who have survived will
not go the way of the miller, the maltman, the tanner, and the
other country tradesmen who have vanished from the rural
scene.
NON-AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES
Ironstone. In a good many places in this district of the
Midlands, ironstone has been dug from time to time. In a
corner of the Survey area digging has been carried on for the
past fifty years, with varying success. Originally the stone
was calcined at works adjacent to one of the larger villages of
the area, but higher production costs led to the removal of
this process elsewhere some twenty years ago. Employment
in this small industry has fluctuated rather violently. It rose
to sixty men during the industrial boom at the^nd of the last
war, dropped to thirty when calcination ceased, and, still
lower, to twenty men working only half-time, during the
economic slump. Since then the industry has looked up once
more, and under the stimulus of the war-time demand eighty
men are employed, which is the maximum number possible
with the present plant. Output has fluctuated at different
times from 500 tons to nearly 4,000 tons a week. The quarries
are operated by a South Wales company.
Ironstone workers are all local men, and they tend to come
from the same families. They work a forty-eight-hour week,
and their earnings in peace- or in war-time have been about
twice as much as those of the local farm-workers. On the
other hand, their employment is more precarious, and the
long periods of depression from which the industry has
suffered at intervals have left their mark upon the village.
The ironstone is relatively low-grade, and although there
are reserves for a good many years to come at the present rate
88 RURAL INDUSTRIES
of quarrying, production after the war is likely to suffer from
the competition of higher-grade stone.
All the stone is hand-picked. While the workings, old and
new, are perfectly obvious, there is nothing about them
suggesting even remotely the devastation and spoliation which
is raising such a problem in some other parts of the Midlands.
Stone quarrying. The local limestone is in demand for
building, road-making and repairs, &c., and two small quarries
on the western side of the Survey area are in operation.
Brewing. There is one small brewery supplying local
houses, a few of which are tied to it. In normal times em-
ployment is given to about twenty men, all of whom live in
the same village. If the present demand be sustained, the
management estimates that employment and output could be
increased by 50 per cent. Brewers' grains are sold wet to
local dairy farmers, and there is a small demand for yeast
from pig-keepers.
Plush. Mention must be made of an old industry which
spread through a few villages on the northern border of the
Survey area and outside it during the past 100 years or more
the manufacture of plush. The whole process, weaving, ful-
ling, and dyeing, was carried on in various places and the plush
from these little looms supplied uniforms and liveries for
several European courts and Eastern potentates, as well as
for many of the noble families of this country and for the gay
cloaks dear to the Spanish races everywhere. The decline of
royalty, the passing of the great houses and their liveried
staffs, and changes in fashion, all combined to depress the
industry, which has dwindled steadily since the last war. A
few looms were still working in one of the villages when the
present war broke out, and there were some apprentices in
training, but the exigencies of war service carried them off.
The factory failed, also, to secure an adequate allocation of
wool, and, although one loom is still working, the industry
seems unlikely to revive. There was a time when the big
manor farm and the plush mill employed all the men in this
village : to-day, nearly everyone goes away to work.
CHAPTER VI
RURAL ADMINISTRATION
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN RURAL AREAS. LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN
THE SURVEY AREA: Parish Meetings; Parish Councils; Rural
Districts. PUBLIC ASSISTANCE. THE FUTURE OF RURAL ADMINI-
STRATION: Parish and Rural District; The County Council;
CONCLUSIONS.
IT is a far cry to the days when parochial government was
a reality in which everyone took an active part. Then, the
manor court was the administrative authority, and besides
having full responsibility for the peace, the poor, the high-
ways, &c., it exercised complete control over farming in the
open fields. All freeholders and tenants of the manor had to
attend the court, and its executive officers were selected from
their number. Thus its people controlled their own affairs,
social and industrial, by a scheme of administration main-
tained by the consensus of public opinion, without recourse
to the law of the land and at very small cost.
All this has changed, and in place of attendance at the
court, of sharing in the responsibility for its by-laws, of
serving on the jury charged with the duty of securing the
observance of such by-laws and fining offenders, of taking his
turn as bailiff, constable, overseer, or surveyor instead of
this personal participation in the active administration of his
parish, the rural dweller to-day can do no more than cast
a vote for the election of someone to represent him on a larger
local administrative unit, the executive functions of which are
carried out by salaried officials. After holding up his hand at
a Parish Meeting, or making a cross on a ballot paper, the
man in the field has no further part nor lot in the administra-
tion of his country-side.
Local administration to-day is based upon the Local
Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, the former having set up
the County Councils, while the latter brought into being the
District Councils, the Parish Councils, and the Parish Meet-
ings. The Local Government Acts, 1929 and 1933, introduced
90 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
important modifications, particularly in the administration of
Public Assistance.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN RURAL AREAS
The smallest unit of local government in the country is the
rural parish, and the Parish Meeting is the foundation of
administrative authority in the parish. The Parish Meeting
under the existing law may be classified in the following
categories :
i. A parish meeting established in a rural parish, not having a
separate parish council, being thereby the local government
authority for the parish and vested with executive powers
and duties, meeting at least twice annually ;
ii. A parish meeting established in a rural parish, having a
separate parish council, vested with powers of supervision,
authorization, and election of parish councillors, meeting at
least once annually;
iii. A meeting of the electorate convened at any time by the
chairman of the parish council, by any two parish council-
lors, or by any six local government electors. 1
The Parish Council is elected triennially by the Parish
Meeting in those villages with populations exceeding 300, and
also in those smaller ones in which the Parish Meeting so
resolves or to which the County Council has given permission
to elect a Parish Council. Election of members is by nomina-
tion and show of hands at the Parish Meeting, though a ballot
may be demanded.
To facilitate joint action in certain matters and some local
centralization of administration, particularly of finance,
parishes are grouped together in Rural Districts, under the
Rural District Council, each constituent parish having the
right to elect a representative to serve on it. He or she is not
necessarily a member of the Parish Council where there is
one, nor necessarily resident in the parish represented.
Election takes place at a Parish Meeting held for the purpose.
The final authority in local administration is the County
1 From Local Government Reform as it affects the Rural Parish. National
Council of Social Service, 1943.
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 91
Council. Parishes are grouped to form Electoral Districts,
each of which returns one representative.
This survey is not concerned to present a complete analysis
of the present-day working of the whole local government
system. It is concerned mainly with the work of the Parish
Meeting and the Parish Council, although the impact of the
larger bodies, the District Council and the County Council,
on the affairs of the parish has to be brought into the account.
The field of work which appears to await the attention of
Parish Meetings and Parish Councils is extensive and impres-
sive. Here is a summary of their principal existing functions. 1
Subject
1. Allotments and Gardens
2. Lighting and Watching
3. Public Libraries
4. Baths and Wash-houses
5. Burial Grounds
6. Public Improvements
7. Land
8. Offices
9. Village Halls, Playing Fields
10. Rights of Way
11. War Memorials
12. Postal and Telegraph
Services
13. Gifts
14. Parochial Charities
15. School Managers
1 6. Expenses
17. Sewerage and Water Supply
1 From Local Government Reform as
Council of Social Service, 1943.
Scope of Powers
Provision and management.
Provision of public lighting.
Provision and maintenance.
Provision of public baths,
bathing places, and wash-
houses.
Provision and maintenance.
Provision and maintenance of
recreation grounds, walks,
shelters, and seats (other
than on public highways).
Acquisition, disposal, and ac-
ceptance of gifts.
Provision.
Provision and maintenance.
Maintenance.
Maintenance and protection.
Payment of loss on services.
Acceptance and administra-
tion.
Appointment of trustees and
submission of accounts.
Part appointment.
Precepts and loans.
Notice of proposals.
it affects the Rural Parish. National
92 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
Small wonder if the would-be social reformer is stirred
when he learns, for the first time, of this magnificent field of
work. Small wonder, perhaps, if this should be followed by
feelings of disillusionment and indifference when he learns
that most of it is a mirage, owing to the statutory limitation of
parochial expenditure to the produce of a rate which is rarely,
if ever, sufficient to provide the public lighting, the libraries,
the baths and wash-houses, the recreation grounds and
playing-fields, and all the other services and amenities which
were contemplated, apparently, when the Local Government
Act was passed. Expenditure by the Council is limited to the
produce of a fourpenny rate, though it may be as much as
eightpence with the consent of a Parish Meeting. In practice,
therefore, the smallest administrative bodies of our local
government system are reduced to watching the interests of
their parishes and recommending action to higher admini-
strative bodies with wider financial powers, rather than taking
direct action themselves. It will be useful to see how the
system is working, to-day, in the Survey area.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE SURVEY AREA
Parish Meetings. Parish Meetings are the administrative
organization in nearly half of the villages, the populations of
which range from 158 to 332. With one exception it seems
hardly too much to say that in all these villages the spirit of
self-government is non-existent. In three of them there have
been no Parish Meetings for years. 'If a Parish Meeting is
summoned, nobody comes to it', said one chairman. In
another village an annual meeting is held, but no interest is
taken in it. 'The chairman and myself were the only people
present last time', said one of the villagers. In most of these
places the general practice seems to be for the chairman of the
Parish Meeting to continue in office from year to year and to
do anything that has to be done, after consultation, possibly,
with one or two friends. *When he has had enough', he
arranges for someone else to take the job, calls a Parish
Meeting, and gets it settled. Sometimes he will not take
even this small amount of trouble. In one place, in which the
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 93
chairman is seldom resident, he himself does nothing nor does
he call a meeting to elect someone in his place. One or two
people remarked that Something ought to be done', but they
would not go to the length of sending him an official demand
for a Parish Meeting. The apathy displayed may be more
than merely regrettable. In one village the chairman is also
chairman of the charity trustees, and to-day he is sole trustee,
for death vacancies have not been filled. 'Supposing he dies/
a villager said, 'there's nobody who would know anything
about it*.
In two of the villages, administered by Parish Meetings,
the opinion was volunteered that all villages should have
Parish Councils. On the whole, people willing to express
their opinions say that they do not like one man being, as it
were, judge and jury of village affairs. 'What we want is a
Parish Council and then we might get something done. ' They
do not seem to know that the Parish Meeting could resolve to
elect a Council, if public opinion could be stirred up to
demand it.
Local government in those villages of the Survey area with
only a Parish Meeting is nearly everywhere a farce. This is
not to say that the Parish Meeting system cannot be made to
work, for in special circumstances it has proved itself effective.
In one small village where there is an endowed school, a
number of public-spirited people associated with it have
educated the villagers in their rights and duties as citizens,
such as why an empty house pays no rates, or how local
charities are administered. Subjects affecting the people are
discussed at the annual Parish Meeting, and raised again at
subsequent meetings. In one year, when a water scheme was
under discussion, the Parish Meeting met six times, and
eventually carried it through. This successful undertaking
was due less, however, to the excellence of the administrative
machinery for getting such things done than to the energy
and persistence of one or two public-spirited people.
It should be recorded that one person in this place pre-
ferred the Parish Meeting to the Parish Council as an instru-
ment of public business, on the ground that the general body
94 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
of the people did not know the run of the discussions inside
a Parish Council meeting, whereas at open meetings of the
electors of the parish 'everybody could have their say'. Again,
however, there seems to be some lack of information about
the powers of the electors, or some reluctance to use them,
for a Parish Meeting must always be called on the demand of
any six electors who wish to raise a particular issue, so that
the advantage of public discussion need not be lost in the
deliberations of a Parish Council.
Parish Councils. These are elected in the villages of the
rest of the area, generally, of course, the larger villages with
populations, three of them, of over a thousand. At the other
end of the scale four of those having Parish Councils are
below the 300 mark. In these small villages the number of
councillors elected is five, while in the larger ones they range
from eleven to fourteen. The larger councils generally have
their own clerk, paid or unpaid, and they meet regularly,
about four or six times a year. Usually there has been some
competition for seats on the Council. Representation tends
to be restricted to the clergy, farmers, and Retired gentle-
men', although in the larger villages there has been a tendency,
lately, to have a sprinkling of working-class representatives.
The smaller the Council, the more likely is it that the
members will be drawn all from one class. The method of
election does little to help to ensure satisfactory representa-
tion. Elections to the Parish Council are by show of hands at
the Parish Meeting. In such a small community as a village,
where everybody knows everybody, this seems particularly
ill-advised. Not one of the people interviewed in the Survey
area supported this method of election, while the opinion
was repeatedly expressed that election should be by ballot.
Apart from removing the fear of giving offence, the ballot
system itself would help to create interest in local affairs by
making people aware of their responsibilities as electors.
The importance of this question is strikingly illustrated by
an election in the Survey area a few years ago. After the
result of the elections by show of hands had been declared,
six of the electors demanded a ballot, the results of which
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 95
were almost a complete reversal of the hand-counting. Six
persons were elected to the Council; one man who had
received 20 votes 'by hand* polled over 100, and the candidate
who had been at the bottom of the hand-count received more
votes by the ballot-box than were given to the one who
received most by show of hands. Counting votes by show of
hands is a complex business when there are as many as
twelve councillors to be elected, and the method is open to
abuse. One man who scraped on to a council with 20 hands
to his credit was told afterwards by a friend of his who was
one of the tellers, 'And you wouldn't have got twenty if I
hadn't added a fewl'
The business which Parish Councils have to transact is
generally very small. Unless the village is being stirred by
some burning question, such as electrification or water-
supply, little interest is shown. Their duties cover the same
field as that of the Parish Meetings, their main function being
to draw the attention of higher authorities to jobs that want
doing. The chairman of one of the smaller Parish Councils in
the area, who acts also as clerk, said that his only regular duties
concerned the allotments. In another village a member said
that the Parish Council did little except to deal with allot-
ments and foot-paths. In still another of the smaller villages
the Council was reported as dealing with 'charities, stiles, and
foot-paths '. The chairman of a fourth, who has held that
office for twenty years, said his Council does nothing, and
'needs new blood*.
In one of the larger villages a relatively active Parish
Council deals with the burial ground, street lighting, allot-
ments, foot-paths, and certain charities. In another the clerk
said that practically all the powers conferred by the Local
Government Act, 1894, had now been transferred to the Rural
District Council or the County Council, and the public
interest which the Act had aroused had consequently died
out. As he has been in office ever since the Act was passed,
his opinion is valuable.
Rural Districts. The Local Government Act, 1894, pro-
vided fnr th* Grouping of rural parishes in convenient
96 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
numbers and areas to form Rural Districts. Each constituent
parish is entitled to send one councillor to represent it on the
Rural District Council, who must be elected by ballot should
there be more than one nomination. As originally constituted,
the District Councils were the rating authority, and they had
responsibilities in the districts generally for public health and
sanitation, repair of certain highways, &c., for which a general
rate was levied upon all parishes. Further, they could under-
take work in considerable variety on behalf of their con-
stituent parishes. Thus, a parish unable to secure land for
allotments, or desirous of a water-supply or a sewerage
system, could apply to the District Council, following a
resolution of a Parish Meeting, for the provision of these
things. The decision in such matters rested with the Rural
District Council, and if the services required were provided,
the Council, as the rating authority, would levy a special rate
on the parish benefiting, or even on a part of the parish if only
a part of it benefited, as might happen, for example, with a
sewerage scheme, to provide for interest and sinking-fund
charges on the capital cost involved, and for maintenance of
the works.
It is sometimes said that the Parish Councils are unable to
do much because of their very restricted financial powers, for
they are only entitled to incur expenditure not exceeding a
sum represented by a 4^. rate or Sd. if approved by a Parish
Meeting. With so small a sum a penny rate in some of the
small parishes in the Survey area would bring in about 3
obviously very little can be done. This was undoubtedly one
of the reasons why most of the powers given to Parish
Councils by the Act of 1894 were taken over by the Rural
District Council. 'The Parish Council can't even spend 5
on the War Memorial without the consent of the County
CounciP, said a parish councillor.
A more real restriction, however, on the effectiveness of
the Parish Councils is their personnel. Consisting largely of
farmers and property owners, the councils are unwilling, it is
often said, to press for improvements in village life, such as
scavenging, water-supply, sewerage, housing, &c., for fear of
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 97
increased rates. This bogy is apt to appear whenever any im-
provement is proposed. If a village desires sewerage, water,
or scavenging, a Parish Meeting must be called and if the
proposal be agreed, the Rural District Council is asked to take
the necessary steps to provide the service, the cost of which
or, in special cases, part of the cost must be borne by the
parish in question by the addition of a 'special* rate to the
general rate. For example, one of the larger parishes in
the Survey area is paying a special rate of &d. for sewerage,
in addition to the general rate ; another pays 55. 2,d. extra for
sewerage, water, and scavenging, while the third pays is. 6d.
extra under the same headings. Amongst the smaller parishes,
one pays a special rate of zs. $d. for water and scavenging,
another pays iod. extra for sewerage, and a third is. 8d. for
water. The other parishes in the Survey area have none of
these services for the villagers generally, though the big
houses in all the villages have their own private services, and
consequently there are no additions to the rates. It follows
that there is no equality of services or of rates in rural areas,
even amongst villages within the same Rural District. Thus,
in one of the parishes of the Survey area the annual rate
amounts to 15$. ^d. (los. 2d. general rate and 55. zd. special
rate), while in another, four miles away, it is los. (general
rate) only, no services being provided. This, it is suggested,
is a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs. It means, first, that
property owners who fear increased rates can block all pro-
posals for providing certain services for the people, most, if
not all of which are, in fact, no more than the ordinary
decencies of twentieth- century existence, and such as are the
common expectation of every town dweller. This blocking
will occur either on the Parish Council or on the Rural
District Council or on both, if necessary. Secondly, it means
that costs of public administration are spread unevenly over
the villages, and a small, progressive place may have to carry
a heavy burden of rates. If services such as sewerage, water,
scavenging and lighting were provided wholesale over a
wide area, instead of piecemeal, costs would be less, and better
services would be provided.
H
98 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
What the larger area should be, who should be the con-
trolling authority, and how the provision of the services
should be made and maintained, are large questions. It was
suggested during the Survey that the Rural District should
be the unit of organization of services, and that special rates
would then be merged in the general rate. It is probable that
services maintained by Public Health authorities, such as,
for example, Infant Welfare Clinics, can be organized best in
districts relatively small. A water-supply, on the other hand,
might be provided most efficiently if it covered a large part of
a county or parts of two or three counties, for natural water-
sheds take no account of local administrative boundaries.
The distribution of electricity, again, should be organized,
probably, even more widely, and a national basis might not be
too large. It does not seem sufficient, therefore, to propose
that the existing provision for the supply of certain services
and the payment for them on a parish basis should be
abolished, and that, instead, the Rural District should be the
unit both for the organization of the services and for the levy
to defray their cost. This is possible already, and operative in
some places, but it does not go far enough, and the problem
will have to be examined in further detail later in this report.
PUBLIC ASSISTANCE
A word is necessary about the administration of Public
Assistance, for the changes introduced by the Local Govern-
ment Act, 1929, which abolished the local Boards of Guardians
and transferred their work to the County Councils, affected
rural communities particularly.
The Boards of Guardians were identical, for all practical
purposes, with the Rural District Councils, their members
sitting first as one body and then as the other. For the
administration of the Poor Law the essential difference in
organization, then and now, was that every parish elected a
Guardian to represent it on the Board. In the multitude of
little villages up and down the country, of which those in the
Survey area are typical, the practical effect was that each
parish had a Guardian who knew, probably, or who could
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 99
always find out very easily, all the circumstances of the sick
and needy and could represent them to the Board. Under
the new organization by counties, areas have been constituted
under Guardians 1 Committees, each of which has a paid
Public Assistance Officer, or sometimes two, whose duty it is
to investigate cases, to report to the Committee, to pay out-
relief, and so forth. This officer normally attends at each of
the villages in his area for an hour or two on a stated day in
each week.
At the time of the Survey there were comparatively few
cases of destitution in the area, and in some of the smaller
villages the officer was not attending regularly as there was
nothing for him to do. At the larger villages he was regularly
in attendance. A member of the Guardians* Committee
living in one of them said that the actual duties in connexion
with poor relief were largely done by the officer, and it was
exceptional for the Committee to refuse to confirm anything
he had done. As the Committee meets only monthly, a fair
amount is left to the discretion of the officer particularly in
times less prosperous than the present. The Committee
decides on the amount of relief to be given in every case, each
being decided on its merits. There is no scale of payments,
at least no written scale, but in actual fact the members of the
Committee do carry a rough scale in their heads, and the sort
of remark that is commonly made when considering a case,
such as, 'Let's see, how much do we usually give in the case
of a widow and five children?' is proof of this. But the
Guardians' Committee in the Survey area refuses to draw up
a scale of relief the common argument against such a course
being, 'We don't want to do that, or it might transpire that
we were giving more (or less) than X committee.' This seems
an argument with nothing to commend it, and to an outsider
it is surprising that there should not be some standard scale of
reliefs which, of course, the Committee could vary in par-
ticular cases.
In one village it was said that, on the whole, people are not
nowadays ashamed of accepting relief the fact that relief is
now called public assistance has helped. Nevertheless, old-
ioo RURAL ADMINISTRATION
age pensioners are always glad when they can get supple-
mentary pensions, as a good many of them now do, and can
'come off* public assistance.
There were few complaints about the working of the
Guardians' Committee, or of the Public Assistance Officer,
or about the relief. The present administration under the
County Council was compared by one man with the old system
under the Board of Guardians. He told of an old man who
had worked 60 years for the same farmer, and then had to
appear before the Guardians for relief. The farmer was on
the Board and after hearing the old man's plea, rapped out,
'Give him a is. a week or let him go into the House*. This
cannot be regarded as typical, in any way, of the work of the
old Boards of Guardians, and it must be remembered that the
social legislation which provided Old Age Pensions and
National Health and Unemployment Insurance has done
more to alleviate the hardship of sickness, destitution, and
old age than all the recent changes in the administration of
the Poor Law.
Two improvements were suggested by people in the Survey
area. First, it was considered that a definite scale of reliefs
should be introduced ; second, it was thought that Guardians'
Committees might deal with cases with greater understanding
and sympathy if a proportion of their members were drawn
from the classes which supply most of the cases applying for
relief.
THE FUTURE OF RURAL ADMINISTRATION
Parish and Rural District. The problem at this stage is the
efficiency of the present scheme of parochial and district
organization. Everyone in the Survey area with whom these
matters were discussed was opposed to any extension of the
present executive powers of the Parish Councils. At the same
time, no one wished to see the councils abolished. Criticism
was not so much of the Parish Councils, which most people
think of as existing 'to express to higher authorities the
aspirations of the local people', but of the higher authorities
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 101
for not taking action on their requests. 'When our Parish
Council makes a representation to the R.D.C. or to the
County Council', said one villager, 'nothing is done. 1 In
proof of this stricture, he told how their clerk had asked the
County Council to clean up the village streets, which they
did once, but never came again. On the other hand, another
man in the same village seemed quite satisfied 'the Parish
Council meets and they talks things over amongst them-
selves'. At another place in the area, too, the remark was
made : 'Anything we want doing is referred to the R.D.C. who
are quite helpful/ Perhaps the inhabitant of a place having
only a Parish Meeting made the strongest case for the reten-
tion of the parochial organization, when he said, 'Local people
do know local conditions'. The restriction of their powers,
however, to making representations, was urged in another of
the smaller villages 'because there are not enough people
competent to do things'. Not unnaturally, perhaps, dissent
from this point of view was strongly expressed by a promi-
nent resident in one of the larger villages, who said that the
Parish Council knew far more about its needs than the Rural
District Council, and if it had real responsibility the people
would take more active interest in local affairs. The un-
doubted apathy, he thought, was not surprising, because the
main concerns of most people proper housing, sanitation,
&c. were for all practical purposes outside the province of
the Parish Council.
This question of the relative powers of Parish and Rural
District Councils raises the issue of the effectiveness of the
latter in local government. With one exception, all Rural
District Councillors interviewed deplored the encroachment
of the County Council. 'The R.D.C. is the most competent
local unit, for each member of it knows the needs of the parish
he represents.' It should be noted, however, that parish
representatives are not necessarily members of their own
Parish Councils and the views they hold may conflict with
those of the Council. There was a case in the Survey area
some time ago, where a request from a Parish Council for a
water-supply was successfully opposed on the Rural District
102 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
Council by its own parish representative, until a serious
drought brought home to him the need.
As things are at present, action by Rural District Councils
is held up for lack of money. A penny rate in the Rural
District in which the Survey area is situated brings in about
200, so that a district rate of a shilling (the proportion of
the total rate retained by the district) only gives them 2,400
to spend. Almost their only business is to administer the
Housing and Public Health Acts, and to act as the assess-
ment and rating authority. Even in these matters it was
complained that effectiveness was restricted 'by red tape and
lack of money'. The example of the new farm- workers'
cottages was given. 'If the Government had said, "You are
to build 20 cottages, get on with it", the job would have been
done by now.' This man thought that organization should
be from the bottom upward and outward, that is to say, from
the Parish Councils up to the Rural District Councils and
then outwards by co-operation between neighbouring Rural
Districts. This, he thought, would facilitate the organization
of comprehensive schemes, notably water-supplies, which
should cover wider areas. Instead, the tendency seemed to be
to organize more and more from the top downwards, from
Whitehall through the County Council so that the Rural
District Councils would become mere district offices of the
County Councils and the voices of the village people would
not be heard at all.
The parochial basis of representation on the Rural District
Council is the cause of serious difficulties in its work. The
boundaries of the Rural District being purely arbitrary and
fixed entirely for administrative convenience, it follows that
there is no such thing as district loyalty on the part of its
members, in the sense that loyalty and affection are given to
the parish or county. As a result, Rural District Councillors
tend to put the good of their own parishes before the good of
the district as a whole. This parochialism is a real stumbling-
block, and it is often inimical to the best interests of the
parishes themselves. As an instance, the Rural District
Council of the Survey area had proposed the organization of
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 103
a comprehensive scheme for the collection of salvage from
all the villages. It was turned down because some of them
had already organized make-shift schemes of their own, and
their representatives opposed the general scheme on the
grounds of expense (it might have meant id. or zd. on the
rates), and in the 'our-scheme-is-good-enough-for-us' spirit.
In the absence of any real corporate feeling, it is difficult to
see how this narrow approach to the work of the Rural Dis-
trict Councils can be reformed.
If the Rural District Council is to be retained, either in its
present form or with added responsibilities, there seems to be
general agreement in the area that it needs a good deal of
reform, particularly in its personnel. Each parish in the dis-
trict elects one representative, by ballot if an election be called
for, but more often than not the same representative is re-
turned, unopposed, time after time. Only people with some
leisure and means are able to act as councillors, for meetings
are held in working hours and no payments for loss of time or
for travelling expenses are made. This means that the councils
are composed almost entirely of landowners, clergy, farmers,
owners of businesses, 'retired gentlemen', and the like, for
it is virtually impossible for any working man to contem-
plate election. The Rural District Council of the Survey
area is a representative body only in so far as it includes
people from most of the professions and vocations, and two
women. It is unrepresentative in that there are very few
members directly representing the working classes, who make
up the bulk of the population. Nine-tenths of the councillors
are reckoned to be independent or retired. Further, it is an
aged body, about half the members being over 60 and only
two of them under 40 years of age. 'Whatever powers the
R.D.C. gets, it will never function properly until it gets
better personnel/
If this be agreed, how is the personnel to be improved ?
A good deal would be achieved if it were made possible for
wage-earners to attend. At present, two days in each month
are required for the meetings of the local Rural District
Council. They are held in working hours, in the near-by
104 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
market town, and no expenses are paid. Two simple reforms
would make it possible for working men to accept nomina-
tion. First, employers should be obliged to release employees
who happened to be councillors, for attendance at meetings.
Second, councillors should be reimbursed for wages lost
through attendance at meetings, and for travelling expenses
necessarily incurred. In summer-time an alternative to the
first proposal would be to hold all District Council meetings
in the evening, as are all Parish Meetings. With these re-
forms, it should be open to any competent person to accept
nomination for the Rural District Council, and this might
bring about its real invigoration. Another reform urgently
needed, however, is to secure that the parish representatives
should also be members of their Parish Councils; if not
already members, they should be co-opted on election to the
Rural District Council. It would be impossible, then, for the
anomalous situation noted above to arise, in which a recom-
mendation from the parish to the Rural District Council was
opposed by its own representative.
The idea prevails in many places that a contest for a seat on
the Rural District Council is a personal matter between the
candidates. If a member who has represented his parish for
several years past be challenged, he is inclined to resent it as
a personal reflection, whereas it should be regarded merely as
a sign of awakened interest in what should be a truly demo-
cratic rural administrative system.
The County Council. It is not the purpose of this survey to
deal at any length with the organization of local administra-
tion under the County Council. The recent tendency seems
to be to centralize the administration of rural affairs more and
more in the hands of this body, while, on the other hand, the
impression created by investigation in the Survey area is that
few people feel any association whatever with the county
organization, nor any personal responsibility for it.
The reasons are not far to seek. Everything that has been
said about representation on the Rural District Council
applies equally to the County Council only more so.
County Councillors are drawn almost exclusively from land-
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 105
owners and farmers and people of independent means. In
many instances they have given and are giving real service to
the community, but in a democracy other interests should be
represented, and this is virtually impossible until members
can claim payment for time lost and for expenses incurred
in attending meetings of the Council and its committees.
Elections for the County Council are as rare as they are for
the Rural District Council. When a member wishes to retire,
he will arrange, normally, for a successor. The parishes in
the Survey area fall into four electoral divisions, and in no
one of them was the election of the present representative
contested.
In fact, the County Council is a self-perpetuating body, for
all practical purposes, which depends a great deal upon a team
of very efficient officials, and it is in this that it has the ad-
vantage of the Rural District Council which cannot often
afford to employ full-time, highly qualified, professional men.
CONCLUSIONS
Clearly, there is plenty of scope for some reconsideration
of the organization of local government. The need for certain
reforms is obvious. It is a question whether the Parish Meet-
ing should not give place everywhere to the Parish Council.
In the county of the Survey area, 40 per cent, of the rural
parishes have nothing more than a Parish Meeting, which too
often means, in practice, that there is no parochial organiza-
tion at all.
There are good grounds for suggesting that the election of
members for the Parish Council by show of hands should be
abolished and that the ballot should be compulsory.
The Chairman of the Parish Council might be given more
standing, with the title, perhaps, of Chairman of the Parish.
He should be the person to whom any stranger to the place
would naturally apply for information. In fact, his position
would be somewhat analogous to that of the maire of a French
village.
There is clear evidence that the chosen representative of
106 RURAL ADMINISTRATION
the Parish on the Rural District Council ought, ex officio, to
be a member of the Parish Council, if not one already.
Members both of the Rural District Council and of the
County Council should be entitled to payment for time lost
and for expenses necessarily incurred in attending meetings.
Employers, also, should be required to release workmen
elected to either of these bodies for the time necessary for
service upon them.
Generally, everything possible should be done to remove
the present apathy towards local government. The survey
showed that there is very little interest in it among the ordi-
nary people. The older people put up with their primitive
living conditions, believing there is no remedy. The younger
people put up with things so long as they have to, and move
off into towns when they can. The broadening of the basis of
representation is the first step, and education, both in school
and in adult classes, could do much to arouse in young and
old a sense of their personal responsibility for the present
state of affairs, good or bad. A less popular, but possibly
more effective, measure would be the abolition of the practice
of compounding with landlords for the payment of cottage
rates. In theory, of course, every householder pays rates. In
practice, a large number of them pay only through their rents,
and 'the rating authority levies upon their landlords. Direct
payment for the cost of local government might do more than
anything else to arouse the sense of responsibility for it. It
may be expected, too, that the war-time organizations for
Civil Defence will have developed responsibility and qualities
of leadership latent in many people and by no means the
monopoly of any one class of the community.
When all is done, however, there remains the fundamental
problem of the finance of local government. In the last
resort, it is not a question of whether there should be a Parish
Meeting or a Parish Council, or whether the Rural District
Council or the County Council should be the body respon-
sible for doing this or that. These are matters merely of
relative efficiency and expediency. The big question is how
to provide and pay for, in sparsely populated districts and
RURAL ADMINISTRATION 107
amongst small communities, the public services of all kinds
which are available, nowadays, to the great mass of the people
resident in larger communities. It is a question which will
come up again when the standard of these services in rural
areas to-day is under consideration.
CHAPTER VII
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
THE VILLAGES. THE HOUSES: The Old Cottages; The 'Addison'
Houses, 1919; The 1924 Scheme; The Reconditioning Scheme,
1926; The 1936 Scheme; The Housing Act, 1938; The Agricul-
tural Workers' Houses, 1943. THE, PUBLIC * SERVICES : Water;
Sewerage; Light and Heat; Scavenging. RECONDITIONING AND
IMPROVEMENT: Maintenance; Reconstruction; Roofs; Accom-
modation. THE POST-WAR PERIOD : Demand ; Principles of Policy.
'One cannot move about the countryside without realizing that
many of the farm houses and farm buildings are a social and
economic disgrace to Britain. Still more disturbing is the obso-
lescence, inadequacy of accommodation, and the insanitary and
derelict condition of a large proportion of the cottages of rural
workers/
'It 's all very well to have a house that looks like a Christmas
card, but it's better to have one that's watertight.'
THE first of these quotations is from the Presidential Address
delivered to a Property Owners' Association by the general
manager of one of the great building societies. The second
is the obiter dictum of a country plumber.
In some of the foregoing chapters the economy of the
farming system under the present layout of fields and farms
has been considered. The Survey area demonstrates clearly
enough that the amount of reconstruction and re-equipment
which is needed to remove the handicaps under which farm-
ing is practised is very considerable. Turning from the
economic to the social side of rural life, from the sphere of
men's work to that in which the woman rules, housing and
the public services rank first, and call for the fullest examina-
tion. It would be useless, surely, to improve the position of
the farm worker and his earning capacity, while leaving the
conditions of his home life at a mid- Victorian level, with all
that this imposes in the way of domestic drudgery, physical
discomfort, and too often, it may be feared, -of physical
unfitness, on his wife and family.
The rural scene owes much of its beauty to the architecture
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 109
of its humbler dwellings. Nothing is more characteristic of
any locality than the form and structure of its older cottages :
stone walls and mullioned windows, in districts of building
stone; timber framing with mud-and-stud, or later, with
brick filling or weather tiles, in the woodland districts;
brick, in the clay country, or brick and flint where chalk and
clay converge ; while here and there, where small deposits of
suitable material occur, or where skill in handling some
particular stuff was developed, delightful survivals of some
bygone local building tradition. Roofs, too, may be equally
characteristic: thin stone slates where the local stone would
split; great heavy slabs where it would not, and where
strong oak timber was available for rafters, purlins and
principals to support them ; tiles of various kinds in the clay
country; thatch, anywhere and everywhere in the southern
half of England wheat or rye straw commonly, but reed
in a few places in the east.
More recently, however, the desire for the utmost economy
in building construction, and facilities for cheap transport,
have introduced brickwork and slate into every part of the
country, and the all-conquering 'Flettons' and thin Welsh
slates, blue or purple, have made their appearance in many
unsuitable settings.
THE VILLAGES
The villages of the Survey area have a definite local
character, and there has been singularly little admixture of
modern styles and materials. The area is so exclusively
agricultural, and so remote, until recently, from the pressure
of industrialism, that the demand for new houses has been
very small. Agriculture has not been an expanding industry
for a long time. The decline of arable farming during the
past two generations, together with the increasing use of
machinery, have reduced the demand for labour, and the
evidence of the villages is that there are fewer houses, not
more, than there used to be. In the Survey area, too, few
replacements, if any, have been called for, such as were
common enough in districts of less substantial building, for
iia HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
the local material is stone, rich, orange-brown stone, which
outcrops here and there in the neighbourhood, and it has
been used everywhere in rugged courses of rubble walling.
Doors and windows are furnished with the traditional drip-
stones, door-jambs are of dressed stone, the windows stone-
mullioned, with deep interior splays. There is no local stone,
however, which will split to give stone slates like those of the
true Cotswold country, and these have been imported only
for the more important buildings, while the roof coverings
of the cottages and farm buildings are straw thatch. These
local materials, with their rich colour and rough texture,
used as they are with little architectural ornament and with
an instinctive sense of proportion, impart real character,
charm, and dignity to the villages of the Survey area.
Omitting the three larger ones, there is a great similarity
between village and village. Parishes are so small that the
inclosure of the open fields caused little change in the
location of the population. Farm workers live, for the most
part, in the villages, walking or cycling to their work, and
about half of the farm-houses and buildings lie in the
villages too. The gain to the social life of this arrangement
is obvious, but the absence of any provision of the public
services, almost complete everywhere in the Survey area
notwithstanding this concentration of population within
the villages, is a problem which will have to be considered.
There is only one big country house in the area, a fine
example of Tudor, and earlier, architecture, standing in a
small park, and there are two smaller ones. The absence of
others is explained, probably, by the high proportion of
corporate, non-resident landlords in the area colleges and
schools. The number of small freeholds is large.
In the larger villages the composition of the buildings and
of the community is more mixed. They owe their relative
importance to the positions that they occupy on one or other
of the two main roads. They contain more residential
property, more new buildings, and one of them has developed
a small housing estate. Two at least of them have higher
proportions of industrial workers engaged locally, for the
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 111
most part, in one of them, in the other, going out to work in
a factory some miles away. Neither of these two, nor any
other places in the Survey area, can be said to be * dormitory*
villages in the sense that strangers are invading them in any
numbers. What was happening before the war was that
agricultural workers were becoming industrial-minded with
the opportunity of better-paid work within reach, but there
was a declared reluctance, on their part, to leave their
villages in favour of the town. The great increase in the
industrial demand for labour which has arisen since, raises,
at once, the whole question not so much of the location of
industry as of the location of industrial workers' dwellings.
Given a new factory in a rural area, should its workers be
housed in a garden village or model housing-estate laid out
around it, or should advantage be taken of available transport
facilities to assimilate them in groups to the village com-
munities already established within, say, a ten-mile radius
of the factory ? And if the second alternative be preferable,
how should the new additions to the old villages be made,
so as to secure the maximum of assimilation with the
minimum of discordancy ?
The common practice both of Local Authorities and of
speculating builders is to select sites on the edges of the
villages a field, or the village allotments upon which to
execute their housing schemes. The new houses, raw as
most new houses must be, stand out stark and staring on the
bare site, with no setting, no background, their gardens mere
pieces of land fenced off from the field, without a tree or a
bush or even a hedgerow to suggest a natural boundary.
Inevitably, the new houses are the most remote from shops,
inns, schools, and places of worship. Inevitably, all the
tenants are new-comers, strangers, probably, to the villagers
and to each other. If there be enough of them, they may
come to form a community of themselves, but not for a long
time will they assimilate themselves to the old community
so as to form one unit for social purposes, and it will be
difficult for the village to escape classification, in future, as
being of the 'dormitory* type.
ii2 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
On the other hand, there are arguments for building on a
clean site, on which there is ample room to allow of a good
layout, and where land may not have such inflated values as
in the village itself.
The alternative is to join the pleasant huddle of houses
centred on the church and the inn, by taking advantage of
every vacant site upon which a house or houses could be
built, with due regard to air-space and lights. This policy
would enable full advantage to be taken, in the most econo-
mical way, of public services such as are available in the
village. It would avoid the segregation of the new-comers,
and would tend to promote their absorption into the com-
munity life. It would almost compel attempts to harmonize
the new buildings with any local traditional styles, whereas
recent experience in the Survey area shows that satellite
estates are put up in the manner most economical at the
moment, untrammelled by local building conventions.
The most obvious disadvantages of adding to the housing
within the village are the higher site values, and the impossi-
bility, almost certain, of being able to provide adequate
gardens adjacent to the houses.
THE HOUSES
The houses of the Survey area fall into fairly definite
categories. There are the really old cottages which have
survived in large numbers to the present day by reason of
their solid construction. With the addition, from time to
time, of comparatively few more, they sufficed for the
agricultural and rural industrial demand during the last thirty
years or so, in which the development of cheap and rapid
transport brought the villages within the reach of industrial,
clerical, and professional workers in the not distant towns.
This, and the awakening of the public conscience to the evils
of insanitary houses, overcrowding, and so forth, led to efforts
on the part of the local authority, at certain dates, to provide
more and better houses in some of the villages of the Survey
area. Here, at all events, there has been little or no speculative
OLD COTTAGES
OLD COTTAGES
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 113
building, and nearly all the new housing has been provided
by the local authority.
The Old Cottages. The older cottages, belonging mostly
to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are built with
solid walls of local stone, as has been described already;
their roofs, now or originally thatched, are of the usual light
sapling construction. The ground floors were, and many of
them still are, stone or brick paved; the upper floors were
framed with heavy oak or elm beams and joists, covered with
broad boards of these timbers. The original big chimneys
were of stone, and while many still remain, more have been
rebuilt, at one time or another, in brick.
In plan, these old cottages are simple in the extreme. As
originally built, the ground floor was one large * house-place',
with a large, open fire-place and the bread oven, which forms
such a pleasant bulge on the outside of the house, neatly
slated or thatched, as it breaks the line of one of the walls.
From this room a staircase winding round its newel-post
leads to a passage bedroom, which gives access to a second
and sometimes to a third bedroom. In modern times, a
scullery and larder have been partitioned off from the big
room on the ground floor in most of the cottages, and the
bedroom has been similarly divided. Except where there
has been reconstruction, the casements of the windows,
particularly of the bedrooms, are too small to satisfy modern
standards of lighting, and the defect is accentuated by the
deep, projecting thatch. Bedroom ceilings are often very
low. Accommodation is too restricted to provide space for
such modern necessities as prams and cycles.
It is rare to find services such as water or electric light
laid on to these cottages, even when these conveniences are
available, which, in most villages of the Survey area, they
are not. Water has to be fetched from the nearest well or
street stand-pipe, and lighting is by lamps and candles.
Sanitation takes the form of a pail closet outside, and its
contents and the house slops are disposed of in the gardens,
which, not infrequently, are too small to make satisfactory
sewage farms. Indeed, there are some houses without
iH HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
gardens, and pails must be carried through the houses to
some place of deposit outside the village.
These old houses are mainly a problem in reconditioning
and servicing to bring them up to modern requirements.
This is a matter which is dealt with later. Before passing on,
however, it is necessary to describe some old houses in quite
another category.
Most people are accustomed to associate the idea of slum
dwellings with the back streets and hidden courts of towns.
In fact, slums just as bad as any in towns are to be found
in many country villages. Work in the Survey area has
demonstrated that it is no exception, and the conditions
disclosed in some of its villages should be recorded. Here
are some examples:
(1) A house consisting of two rooms, one on the ground
floor and one above. A badly fitting front door opens into
the living room, which has a stone floor, broken and uneven,
a window not made to open, and it is fitted with a small
range with a minute oven. There is, also, a narrow, combined
larder and coal-house, the plaster of which is dropping off
from damp. The staircase from the living room is in total
darkness; it is in very bad condition, one stair being almost
completely worn away. The upstairs room has been divided
into two, at some time, by a light partition of laths covered
with wallpaper. In places the laths are now falling away.
The floor of the inner part is in holes, which the tenant has
patched. Snow blows through the roof and the walls are
damp. One room contains two double beds, the other a
double bed and a washstand; there is no floor space for
more furniture.
The family living in this house consists of a man and his
wife, six sons, the eldest of whom is 18, and one little girl.
They have been trying for seven years to get a council house,
but at every vacancy they are told that there is a case more
necessitous than theirs.
(2) Here is a somewhat better house, made by knocking
together a pair of the two-roomed houses like the one just
described. Thus, it has two living-rooms downstairs, both
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 115
with broken stone floors, a wash-house with copper at the
back, and a long, narrow cupboard under the stairs where
coal and cycles are kept. Upstairs are two bedrooms, each
of them subdivided by screens or hangings. As, how-
ever, the windows are both on one side, the two extra rooms
have neither light nor ventilation. Eight people live in
this house. Properly reconditioned it might be a passable
dwelling.
(3) This is another two-roomed house, occupied by an
old-age pensioner, but, in fact, it is a one-roomed house, for
the staircase and the floor of the upper room both are unsafe
and are not used. The front door, which opens directly into
the small bed-sitting room, has gaps of several inches at top
and bottom, through which the wind blows, and it is
unlikely that this is intentional, even though the single
window opposite the door is not constructed to open. The
floor is of stone and in very bad condition. The great open
fire-place, filling up the whole of one wall, has never been
adapted to take a modern stove. It contains an iron basket-
grate which seems incapable of heating the room, and all
cooking has to be done upon it. There is a small bed against
the wall on the other side of the room. The rent for this
habitation is said to be 3$. 6d. a week.
(4) The fourth example is a row of ancient houses which
have been allowed to fall into decay to the point at which one
of them has collapsed entirely. The rest have been con-
demned as unfit for habitation, as to which there can be no
question, but occupation of them is permitted as a war-time
emergency concession. Their condition beggars description,
and whether it is right to permit the occupation of such
breeding-grounds of ill health and disease, even under stress
of war or on any other pretext, seems to be arguable.
Most of these slum houses are provided each with its own
privy, but there are instances, here and there, of combined
use of one by two or more families.
It is said that, before the war, property of this class was
changing hands at about 50 a house. The bare minimum
of repairs, or none at all, was done for the tenants, the object
u6 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
being, apparently, to get all that could be got from them
before the houses were condemned.
The 'Addison' Houses, 1919. The general impression left
by the smaller villages is that there was very little building
in them during the half-century, or longer, which preceded
the last war. The Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890,
had given certain powers to local authorities to enter the
field previously reserved for private enterprise, and to meet
manifest needs for industrial dwellings. The Housing, Town
Planning, &c. Act, 1919 the 'Addison Act* required
every local authority to exercise these powers by considering
the needs of their area for houses for the working classes, and
preparing schemes specifying the number and the nature of
the houses they proposed to build, the quantity of land to
be acquired for the purpose, and the localities in which they
proposed to acquire it. When the execution of an approved
scheme was found to involve the local authority in an annual
loss exceeding the produce of a id. rate on the area chargeable
with the expenses of the scheme, the balance was to be
recoverable from the Treasury.
Under this Act a good deal was done all over the country
to mitigate the housing shortage, and in most villages of the
Survey area a few cottages were built. They were of two
types, the parlour type and the non-parlour type, the former
having parlour, kitchen, and scullery, and three bedrooms ;
the latter, living-room, scullery, and three bedrooms. Both
types provide larders, and coppers in scullery or kitchen.
There is accommodation for coals, bicycles, and prams. As
to sanitation, where water is laid on and the villages are
sewered, as happens in two only of them in the area, baths
and water-closets are provided. In one or two other villages,
where there is piped water but no sewage disposal, there are
baths and indoor chemical closets ; in the rest the chemical
closets are the only provision.
The Addison cottages are distinguishable everywhere in
the Survey area by their Mansard roofs. They have little
or nothing in common with the building tradition of the
neighbourhood. Faced as they are with the local stone,
COUNCIL HOUSES
Above: 'Addison* Act, 1919- Below: Housing Act, 1936
COUNCIL HOUSES
Agricultural Workers' Houses, 1943
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 117
however, and roofed with stone slates, they are not unsightly.
They are well planned and roomy, and from the point of view
of occupation they mark a distinct advance.
The 1924 Scheme. The Housing (Financial Provisions)
Act, 1924, differentiated between the erection of houses for
agricultural workers and those intended for general occupa-
tion, by larger grants for the former. Under the terms of the
conditional grant about fifteen houses were built in the
Survey area, and they were occupied originally by agri-
cultural workers. Where these tenants have turned since
to other occupations, they have been allowed to remain in
the council houses.
The Reconditioning Scheme, 1926. A departure in housing
subsidies was made in 1926 by the enactment of the Housing
(Rural Workers) Act. This was designed to increase the
cottage accommodation of the country-side by encouraging
landlords to repair and improve cottages, structurally sound,
which had become dilapidated or which fell short of modern
standards of comfort in the accommodation they provided,
and were likely to be condemned. Grants up to two-thirds
of the cost of the work, with a maximum of 100 per cottage,
were payable, subject to the approval of the local authority,
with a stipulation that any house thus reconditioned must
be let at not more than the normal agricultural rent. Subse-
quent Acts, the last of them passed in 1942, have introduced
various alterations in the amounts and conditions of the
grant.
The restriction on the amount of the rent chargeable for
these cottages, combined with a certain reluctance on the
part of some local authorities to collaborate with landowners
in operating the Acts, may explain why comparatively little
advantage has been taken of them. In the Survey area there
was little evidence of any reconditioning under the Acts.
The 1936 Scheme. Under the provisions of the Housing
Act, 1936, the Government was prepared to make grants to
local authorities for two purposes. These were (i) for slum
clearance, and (ii) for the re-accommodation of overcrowded
families. This Act has been applied in one of the larger
ii8 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
villages of the Survey area, in which certain clearance areas
were made and accommodation for three overcrowded
families was applied for, resulting, altogether, in the building
of an estate of forty-eight new council houses on the outskirts
of the village. Further reference is made to this housing
scheme later.
The Housing Act, 1938, provided an Exchequer subsidy
of 10 a year for forty years for each new house built by a
local authority, or by a private person with the approval of
the local authority, for the use of agricultural workers. It
does not seem to have been exploited to any extent in the
Survey area.
The Agricultural Workers' Houses, 1943. Early in that year
it was announced by the Minister of Agriculture that 3,000
houses were to be built forthwith in rural areas, for the
exclusive use of farm workers. Allocations were made to
the counties, and it was left to their War Agricultural
Executive Committees to allocate them to the villages
where the need was greatest. Erection devolved upon the
appropriate Rural District Councils. Two or three villages
have been selected within the Survey area, in each of which
a pair of these houses has been built. In planning and
accommodation they are good, and attempts have been made
to assimilate them to their surroundings. The bricks of
which they are built and the cement tiles with which the
roofs are covered harmonize fairly well with the old build-
ings. All have ample accommodation according to present-
day standards a large kitchen, good scullery with sink and
copper, built-in cupboards, water-closets, bathroom with
hot and cold water, pram and cycle room. Upstairs are three
large, light bedrooms. Water, of course, is laid on ; a public
supply is a prerequisite to any new building.
THE PUBLIC SERVICES
Water. In six only of the villages are there piped water-
supplies, and in two only of these are many of the houses
connected to the mains. In the others, a few stand-pipes are
set up at convenient points and the people take their buckets
WATER SUPPLIES. 'PIPED'
WATER SUPPLIES
Above : Dipping-place. Below : Drinking-water tank
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 119
and cans to them. In all the rest of the villages water is got
from wells, open springs provided with dipping places, and
streams.
These are the conditions in a district which is naturally
full of water, containing, as it does, the sources of four or
five streams which sufficed to operate more than a dozen mills
at one time, before they pass out of the Survey area. In one
of the larger villages the wells and springs were condemned
some time ago, and some 1,200 people are dependent now
for their drinking water upon water carted from a distance
and run into galvanized cisterns placed in the streets.
The full inconvenience of the prevailing absence of water-
services falls most severely upon the working people. The
larger private houses and the farm-houses, although equally
dependent upon wells or springs, are equipped, as a rule,
with mechanical pumps and with water-storage inside the
house. This is one of the obstacles to the provision of public
supplies, for the bugbear of higher rates is always raised by
those who have arranged for their own comfort, and who
object, perhaps not unnaturally, to contributing to that of
other people. In two of the villages, schemes for public
water-supplies were brought forward in recent years, only
to be resisted on these grounds one of them successfully,
the other for a long time.
The difficulty of cost is a real one in these small villages.
The cost of an installation and mains may be almost as
great for a community of 200 as for one of 2,000, apart, of
course, from the actual connexions to houses, which are
usually charged upon the landlords. It may be suggested
that this difficulty arises only from the parochial view which
is taken in the Survey area, as in so many districts, of the
water problem. Somebody in a small rural parish starts an
agitation for a public water-supply, or it may be that an
active Rural District Council prepares a scheme for the
village, owing to insufficiency of the existing sources, or
their contamination, or both. , After much discussion,
opposition in the parish may be overcome, and the District
Council takes steps to install a complete little system
izo HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
perhaps an artesian well, a little shed containing an oil-
engine and pump, a reservoir on a hill- side to supply the
little village. A year or so later the next village decides in
favour of a supply, another little unit is planned and installed,
and so the work of servicing the housewives of the rural
district proceeds. 1 It is suggested, first, that the supply of
water to the householders of every village in the country
should have priority amongst schemes for rural reconstruction
after the war. Second, that the village is not an adequate
unit for supply, and that the District Council is not the
proper ' administrative authority. The water problem is
bound up with the physical features of the country-side, and
watersheds, springs, and watercourses take no account of
administrative boundaries. In the hands of authorities consti-
tuted to act within water-bearing areas naturally defined, the
problems both of the supply of water to the smaller com-
munities of the country-side and of its cost should be in a
fair way to solution.
Wherever public water-supplies have been provided,
landlords should be obliged to connect their houses to them.
Sewerage. The natural corollary to water-supplies is
sewerage. The disposal of slops by flinging them on that
part of the garden lying next to the house is a dirty business
at best, even when the drudgery of drawing water from a
well or fetching it from a stand-pipe down the road constrains
the housewife to the maximum of economy in its use. When
water is available on the turning of a tap, consumption rises
rapidly, and when baths and water-closets have been fixed
in nearly every house in addition, disposal on the surface of
the garden will no longer be possible.
Nothing is commoner, however, than to find water-
supplies without sewerage no water-closets, sinks with
waste-pipes discharging into buckets, and baths without
waste-pipes at all. In the Survey area, for example, two only
1 The Downland country in a county adjoining that of the Survey area,
for example, is punctuated at its foot with little pumping equipments,
reservoirs, and water mains, each supplying a little village in the vale half
a mile below.
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 121
of the villages have sewerage as well as water, and the inter-
dependence of the two services in contributing to the
maximum of domestic comfort and the minimum of un-
pleasant work seems very imperfectly to be realized. All
the large houses in the area, whether connected to public
water-supplies or providing their own, have private disposal
systems, so that the installation of a general service may be
opposed, as has happened with water-supplies, on the score
of increased rates. But there is another reason why agitations
to secure village water-supplies are rarely associated with
demands for sewerage as well. Village water-supplies begin
and end, as a rule, in stand-pipes in the streets, the advantage
to the larger number of the people being that they can have
pure water from a tap at all times, instead of water from a
well, probably contaminated, which may run dry. Until
house connexions are obligatory, no strong desire for sewerage
is likely to be expressed.
The problem differs from that of water-supply in that
opportunities for joint systems accommodating two or more
villages must be rare. But this raises no difficulty, and
country planning must contemplate the provision of both
services simultaneously. In passing, it may be noted that
there is strong advocacy, in some quarters, of the prevailing
privy system or of the chemical closet, on the grounds that
the mixture of their contents with ordinary garden soil is
sewage disposal in its most sanitary form, while it represents
also a valuable source of fertility for the countryman's
garden. The soundness of this theory cannot be disputed.
In practice, however, there are obvious objections to a
system which calls for a walk down the garden in any
weather and at any hour of the day or night, and the sound-
ness of the theory itself depends upon more attention to the
condition of the privies and more care in the disposal of
their contents than can always be assumed. Incidentally,
of course, the advocacy of the system comes, as a rule,
from those who rarely have to use it, and there can be little
doubt as to what the verdict of the people most concerned
would be.
122 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
Light and Heat. Electric light and power are available in
eight of the villages, supplied by the grid, and gas is provided
also in two of them by local companies. The rest of the
villages of the Survey area seem to be regarded as too far
from the grid to make the supply of current practicable.
Very little use is made of electricity except for lighting,
and in most places only the larger houses and the council
houses take it even for this purpose. While there is some
indifference on the part of the older people, who are con-
tent with the oil lamps and the candles to which they are
accustomed, the explanation seems to be, in part, the cost
of the current, and, in part, the want of any power to compel
the owners of house-property to wire it. Tenants, parti-
cularly those of the smaller houses, cannot be expected to
incur the cost of wiring, and the cables pass over many
cottages which have not been connected. As to the cost of
the current, it is notorious that the present method of dis-
tribution, which segregates town and country communities,
makes current relatively expensive to the latter. Many
people think that this is one of the handicaps which country
planning should remove, and that the grid should be
taken to all villages, all houses wired for light and power,
and current provided at flat rates alike in town and country.
Scavenging. The District Council makes monthly col-
lections of house refuse in the villages of the Survey area.
This compares unfavourably with the weekly or more
frequent collections in larger centres, but it may be
admitted that country dwellers are not usually incommoded
by the longer intervals, for what is left for collection after
any live stock and the garden compost heap have taken their
toll, is mostly cinders and tins.
RECONDITIONING AND IMPROVEMENT
It must be admitted that the first impressions given by
most of the smaller villages, beautiful as they are, is one of
picturesque dilapidation, and a standard of life of an earlier
century. The former, at all events, of these impressions
needs some qualification. Every village contains a few
PICTURESQUE DILAPIDATION
DERELICT HOUSES
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 123
derelict houses, and the thatched roofs of a great number of
others are disintegrating, owing to the difficulty in some
of the villages, the impossibility of finding thatchers. But
the structural condition of the houses generally, is sound,
owing to the durability of the stone of which they are built;
there is no doubt that most of them are capable of fulfilling
all the requirements of modern standards of accommodation,
convenience, and comfort without loss of their individual
character, given some reconstruction and reconditioning
inside and out.
Maintenance. As noted already, landlords in the Survey
area seem to have made little use of the subsidy payable by
Government for repairing and reconditioning under the
Housing (Rural Workers) Acts, 1926-42, but this is not to
say that there have been no attempts at reconditioning the
old houses. On the contrary, a good deal has been done to
maintain and, here and there, to improve them. As to
maintenance, attention has been concentrated mostly upon
the roofs. In a stone country, without stone slates, it was
inevitable that straw thatch should be the roofing used, and
it is the blend of warm colours and the contrast of enduring
and perishable materials which contribute so much to the
character of the villages and to their charm. Thatch has
many advantages as a covering. In an arable farming district
straw is cheap ; the timbers and spars needed to carry it are
light and cheap ; it makes a good roof to live under warm
in winter and cool in summer. Against these, thatched roofs
have some serious drawbacks. They need skilled men to lay
them, and rural craftsmen get fewer every day; even when
well laid the replacement rate is high; there is the ever-
present danger of fire, and when straw thatch gets alight,
the total destruction of the dwelling is almost a certainty, as
witness the ruins which every village can show.
For one or other of these reasons there has been a good
deal of re-roofing of houses in the Survey area, using other
materials. The earlier examples demonstrate the use of
Welsh slates. Straw requires a high-pitched roof so that the
rain-water may run off quickly, without soaking in. Smooth,
i2 4 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
thin slates are more durable, they can be laid much flatter,
and they are light enough not to call for strong and expensive
roof timbers. The substitution, however, causes a complete
alteration in the character and appearance of the house, by
giving it a low, smooth roof, dull blue or unpleasing purple,
in place of the high-pitched, rough-textured thatch, of every
gradation of colour, from gold when newly re-laid to bronze-
black in its last stages.
Recently, all-conquering corrugated iron has been used
when the old houses need re-roofing, and it is employed even
more generally to replace straw thatch on farm buildings.
Corrugated iron is very cheap, it is so light that only very
light roof-timbers are needed for it, and if it be protected
from rusting by paint or tar, its life is long. Quite often
corrugated iron sheets are laid on the old thatch, so that
there is no alteration in the pitch, but this is not to say that
the appearance of the house is unaffected, for no treatment
of its surface can remove the inherent ugliness of this
material and its incongruity in such a connexion.
Here and there, cement tiles, most modern of all roofing
material, have been employed, not unsuccessfully, as a
substitute for straw thatch. They tone, passably, with the
old stone, but their precision and regularity seem hardly to
harmonize with the rough rubble walls, while inevitably they
provoke comparison with the natural Cotswold slates on
some of the larger houses.
As to structural improvements, the opportunity has been
taken here and there, when re-roofing, to raise the height of
the walls a foot or two to give more air-space and headroom
in the bedrooms. Sometimes this is done in stone and some-
times in brick, which may be left bare or it may be plastered
over to tone better with the old wall. Another common
improvement is the substitution of wooden window frames
and larger casements for the stone mullions and the little
casements of the original builders. There is no question of
the value of both of these alterations to those who live in the
houses. When the windows of an old house have thus been
enlarged, its walls raised, and the high-pitched thatched roof
OLD HOUSES RECONDITIONED
Above: Corrugated iron replacing thatch
Below : Welsh slate replacing thatch, walls raised and larger windows
OLD HOUSES, UNTOUCHED AND RECONDITIONED
SIDE BY SIDE
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 125
replaced by a low-pitched covering of Welsh slates, there is
no doubt that its occupants are better found. It must not be
assumed, however, that this is the only form which re-
construction of these old houses can take, or that the demoli-
tion order of the local sanitary authority is the only other
alternative.
Reconstruction. Notwithstanding the new housing provided
of recent years by the public authorities, and only rarely by
private enterprise, by far the greater number of the people
in the Survey area live in old houses, privately owned. For
the most part, living conditions fall far short of modern
standards of comfort, but there is little evidence of any
sense of democratic power or responsibility in the villagers
which would enable them to bring about improvements.
The attitude of the older generation is that improvements
can only raise rates and rents, and. they seem content to
continue under the conditions in which they have been born
and bred. * What's been good enough for me is good enough
for the young 'uns.'
The 'young 'uns', on the contrary, are heartily dissatisfied
with things as they are, but they seem to have no desire to
leave their native villages, and would jump at the chance of
getting roomy cottages with proper services, at almost any
distance from their work. They will not be satisfied to spend
their free time carrying buckets of water from the nearest
well or pump, or even from a tap down the street; or empty-
ing their slops or burying the contents of their earth-closets
in the garden ; or sleeping, three in a bed, in a passage bed-
room; or coming home after a hard day's work without the
chance of a bath. Nor will the young housewives be content
with only one living-room in which cooking, washing, iron-
ing, and all other domestic work must be done, in close
company with husband, children, and visitors ; with no light
nor water; with no sink drain, and often without even a sink;
with food spoiling in hot weather for want of a proper larder ;
without cupboards and storage room not to mention the
frequent difficulty of leaking roofs and damp walls. In
short, the young country dwellers of to-day will not put
i 2 6 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
up any longer with the standards of comfort of the last
century.
Conditions in the villages of the Survey area present a
twofold problem in country planning: how to achieve a
proper standard of living for the people without further
destruction of what is left of the inheritance of beauty.
While there is little doubt that a number, perhaps a large
number, of new houses will have to be built, the policy of
the wholesale demolition of old cottages, associated with the
erection of standardized * council' houses, should be reversed.
The local authority, or some higher authority if necessary,
should consider the expenditure of very considerable sums
in the imaginative reconditioning of the good old buildings
which remain and these would prove, probably, to be the
majority and in the provision of the public services. The
position, of course, is complicated when public money is
needed for the improvement of private property, but the
beauty of the villages of the Survey area, and, indeed, of
most other parts of the country, is a public heritage the
heritage not only of those who dwell in them, but of the
nation at large. It is no part of the purpose of this Survey
to suggest a way out of the difficulty, but it certainly is not
to be found in the demolition order and the substitution of
the modern * council' house. The method of the Housing
Act, 1936, to which reference has been made, is not the way
out. In one of the larger villages it is on record that one side
of a whole street of seventeenth-century cottages of solid
construction and beautiful design was pulled down not long
ago, their occupants being rehoused in a council colony on
the outskirts of the village, designed without the smallest
consideration for the traditional architectural types of the
locality. A demolition order is of no profit to anyone, least
of all to the owner of the property demolished, and even
though there may be difficulties in applying the simple and
obvious remedy for the situation the acquisition at site
value of the dilapidated property after the failure by its
owner to comply with the terms of a reconditioning order
under the Act of 1936 it should not pass the wit of man to
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 127
devise some solution more satisfactory than that provided
by the Act. In effect, responsibility for housing has now
been assumed by the State, and in the exercise of its powers
and functions the preservation of all existing buildings
which can be rendered fit for habitation should be a first
charge upon its activities.
The work to be done in applying this principle will vary
according to the locality, although the outstanding need,
the provision of water-supplies, lighting, and sewerage, is
almost universal ; in the Survey area it has been shown that
these necessaries of modern existence are almost entirely to
seek. When these deficiencies have been supplied, what is
wanted most is a general re-roofing of thatched houses with
something more permanent and less troublesome, and the
provision of extra living accommodation sitting-rooms and
bedrooms.
The first step that suggests itself, if scores of the fine old
houses are to be saved from demolition orders, is that the
District Councils should be relieved of some of the responsi-
bilities now devolving upon them. At present, each of them
employs an officer, known generally as the Building or the
Sanitary Surveyor, who collaborates with the Medical
Officer of Health to decide all questions of the fitness of the
older buildings for human occupation, and the possibility of
bringing them up to modern standards of fitness by additions
and reconditioning. This is a task for which these officers
are not necessarily qualified on the aesthetic side. Their
technical knowledge is unquestioned and their pronounce-
ments upon the actual conditions of the old buildings may
be accepted; but something very much more than this is
needed. Who the authority should be is a matter for careful
consideration. It has been suggested that the County
Architect might have the responsibility, or that there should
be panels of professional architects appointed throughout
the country as referees. There would be no intention, of
course, of superseding the district housing authorities
altogether; they would continue, presumably, to initiate
action by reference of cases to the higher authorities, and by
iz8 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
acting as executive officers for the works of reconstruction
recommended.
Roofs. Within the Survey area the crying need is for the
reconstruction of roofing. It is in the thatched roofs that
the trouble begins which leads ultimately to the demolition
order. Even before the war there was a shortage of thatchers,
due, it is said, to the unwillingness of young men to be
apprenticed to this skilled but arduous craft. Now it is
almost impossible to find thatchers, and the roof-coverings
of scores of cottages are in a deplorable condition. There
seems no doubt that the time has come when straw can be
regarded no longer as an economic roof-covering, both
because of its non-durability and because of the lack of
skilled craftsmen to lay it, even though nothing can equal
the beauty of line, colour, and texture of thatch on these old
buildings. A minor objection, not always realized, is the
virtual impossibility of collecting rain-water from a thatched
roof.
The most satisfactory substitute seems to be the concrete
roofing tile, made of cement and sand, with an admixture of
the rich-coloured local stone dust. Such a tile will tone more
happily with the natural walling of the houses than any other
permanent roofing material. This substitution would entail
new and heavier roofing timbers, at a cost beyond the means,
probably, of many of the owners, but reference has already
been made to the financial problem involved not only in the
saving of much rural beauty, but also in the provision of new
buildings if demolition is the alternative.
In the meantime there is the immediate and pressing
problem of the repair of thatch all over the area. If a syste-
matic re-roofing campaign were contemplated, any temporary
work which would serve to make the disintegrating roofs
watertight for a short time would suffice, and it might be
possible to organize farm workers who normally are in the
habit of thatching stacks and ricks for the purpose. They
could patch the old roofs and make them weather-proof
until the time came for re-roofing them in more permanent
material.
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 129
Accommodation. Next in urgency, if many of the old
houses are to be saved from demolition, is the provision of
additional accommodation. In their oldest form they would
consist of no more than two rooms, one above and one below,
but many of these are built in pairs or in terraces, so that the
simplest way of adding to their accommodation would be to
throw two together. This would provide a house with a
parlour, with ample scope, partly by way of partitioning the
old rooms and partly by the construction of a small lean-to
at the back, for the provision of all modern requirements
such as bath, water-closet, larder, sink, coal-house, &c., now
mostly non-existent. Similarly, on the first floor, one or both
of the two large bedrooms which would result could be
partitioned so as to provide three or four bedrooms as
required.
The accompanying plans show a pair of these old houses
before and after reconstruction. It will be seen that without
seriously altering the character of the building provision is
made for:
Parlour and living-room on front of the house, with a
kitchen-scullery in a recess at the end of the living-room
which could be completely shut off from it if preferred.
A small room with bath, copper, and lavatory basin
behind the parlour, separated from the kitchen- scullery
by a short passage from the back door.
The kitchen-scullery containing an electric cooker, a sink,
and an electric water-heater which supplies sink and
bath ; also a good larder.
A covered way from the back door giving access to coals
and water-closet.
Above, three bedrooms and a lumber room, which could
serve as a fourth bedroom ; ample cupboards.
An outhouse (not shown) to accommodate perambulators,
bicycles, and garden tools.
It is assumed that water is laid on, and this accommodation
and these services would meet the needs of the average
working-class family for some time to come.
Although such reconstruction would halve the number of
' AS BUILT
ELEVATION TO VILLACE STREET
PLAN i. Pair of cottages as originally built.
AS EXISTING
PI.AN
BEDROOM
* PiAN
PLAN 2. Same pair to-day, showing later alterations.
LJ
AS PROPOSED
BEDKOOM*
PLAN 3. Same pair reconstructed as one house.
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
ALTERNATIVE
PROPOSALS
ELEVATION UMCHANqEO
133
CROUND FLOOR- PLAN
BEDROOM FLOOK PLAN
PLAN 4. Same pair, alternative reconstruction.
c- s-o.
*"'. JS.
the houses to which it was applied, it would be a contribution
to the housing problem, nevertheless, if the only alternative
to it were demolition. It would also preserve the amenities
of the village and the essential character of its buildings, for
it will be observed that the suggested reconstruction leaves
the front elevation unchanged.
It is not suggested that all the older cottages and some of
the more recent ones would lend themselves so readily to
134 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
essential re-equipment. There would be the problem of
different ownership of adjacent houses; of constructional
difficulties; of detached houses and how to add to them.
Each must be tackled according to its circumstances. Some
old houses which will not lend themselves to reconstruction
for family occupation might fulfil a most useful purpose at
small expense, if left substantially as they are as regards the
accommodation, but supplied with the public services and
the fittings associated with them, and then reserved for
occupation by old couples. They would help to solve the
problem, which often occurs, of knowing what to do about
the widow, or the old couple past work, who have a house
beyond their needs which ought to be available for a young
family. Given a public conscience aroused to the cramped
and squalid conditions of life to which so many country
dwellers are still condemned, all difficulties could be
surmounted.
THE POST-WAR PERIOD
The Survey area comes under a Joint Planning Committee
set up by the councils of the near-by market town and of the
rural district. A draft Planning Scheme for the whole area
under their joint jurisdiction had been proposed before the
war, but it is now in cold storage until more propitious
times.
During the past twenty-five years the local authority has
built some 200 houses in and around the Survey area. They
have not been earmarked for any particular class of the
community nor for any special industry, but there is little
doubt that the rents at which they were offered, which are
high relative to the wages of agricultural workers and to the
customary rents of farm-workers' cottages, put them above
the means of the land worker at that time.
Demand. Notwithstanding this comparatively liberal pro-
vision of council houses, the Survey disclosed that there is
a considerable unsatisfied demand for houses for workers
of all kinds, as well as for retired persons, old-age pensioners,
and for lodgings for single men and women. The number of
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 135
those who live in the villages and travel daily to their work
by bus, lorry, or train has increased a great deal of late years,
but the villages can hardly be described as 'dormitory'
villages. This demand, however, touches only the fringe of
the subject, which raises all the problems of the future
location of industry and of the housing of the industrial
worker in large numbers, as well as those, relatively simple,
of rural reconstruction.
Over all the Survey area the agricultural demand is for
better rather than for more houses. Higher wages to-day
and the opportunity of alternative employment are making
farm workers, particularly the younger ones, more industrially
minded, and they want a higher standard of comfort in their
homes. But agriculture here, as in most parts of England, is
not, nor can it be, an expanding industry, and additional
housing is needed for farm workers only to the extent that
old houses are condemned as being past repair, or that the
reconditioning of other old houses reduces the total number,
here and there, by throwing two into one.
There is not much evidence in the Survey area of effective
competition for houses by industrial workers, resulting in the
ousting of lower-income farm workers, of which complaints
are not uncommon in some parts of the country. On the
other hand, there are reports from several places of workers'
houses which have been improved and sold to people retired
from trade and industry to live in the country, and, since the
war, to self-evacuees.
The present demand, then, comes mainly from industrial
workers engaged in nearby factories or in aerodrome
construction. Reports show that it is general, coming from
nearly all the villages of the area, and that it is of the same
character in each of them.
There is a considerable demand for industrial workers' dwel-
lings. (20)
There is a demand for about a dozen houses for industrial
workers, and a potential demand for a few farm workers' houses,
too, to replace those occupied by land workers who have been
beguiled into industry by higher wages. (18)
136 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
It is estimated that some 90 houses will be needed for workers
of mixed occupations after the war. (14)
A considerable demand from industrial workers. (8)
There is an urgent demand for good cottages by young married
workers, who are obliged at present to share their parents' houses.
(1-2)
There is a considerable demand here for good workers' cot-
tages. (3)
About 12 good houses are wanted for workers of mixed occupa-
tions. (7)
This sample of the evidence of demand has been taken
at random to cover the area, and the rest of the villages tell
the same tale. As a post-war housing programme, however,
these wants can be taken only as indicating a short-term
policy, for, as suggested above, these small villages present
a problem in country planning which is too large and far too
complex to be solved by the erection of a few dozen houses.
Some discussion of the issues involved will be found in the
final chapter of this Report.
Principles of Policy. Some of the principles which might
be considered as guides to housing policy in the future may
now be suggested.
1 . The local authority should confer with the representa-
tives of local industry the Farmers' Union and the
directors of industrial concerns upon the needs of
their employees for additional accommodation and
upon its location.
2. So far as is practicable, the installation of the three
principal public services, water, sewerage, and electric
light and power, in every village, should precede the
housing programme.
3. All new houses should be built and fitted on the
assumption that these public services will be available
immediately, if not already installed.
4. So far as is practicable, the new houses should be
dispersed amongst the old ones, avoiding segregation in
housing estates on the fringes of the villages.
5. It follows, of course, that everything should be done
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES. 137
to harmonize the new buildings with the old, though
not necessarily by an imitation of old styles nor even by
the use of the same building materials.
On the first of these points it seems quite clear that
housing in the post-war period, in rural areas at all events,
will be the responsibility mainly of some public authority.
By various Housing Acts passed in the last fifty years, the
State has recognized more and more the failure of private
enterprise in building to meet the needs of rural society.
Where, too, the decentralization of industry has brought
about any considerable demand for dwellings for industrial
workers, the deplorable results of uncontrolled speculative
enterprise, such as may be seen in the villages within
transport distance of many factories, justify the assertion
that there must be no repetition of them in the planned
communities of post-war rural England. It follows that there
should be the closest collaboration between the responsible
public authority and the controllers of agricultural and
industrial enterprise, both upon the quantity of housing
required and upon its dispersion within the area of
employment.
On the second and third points little more need be said,
for it is generally conceded that country folk must be given
the same services for the amenity of home life and the
reduction of domestic toil as are enjoyed by larger com-
munities. The problem of the cost of their provision in the
more sparsely populated districts is not an isolated one; it
arises also in connexion with other matters and it will be
discussed later.
On the fourth point it is suggested that the structure of
the village and its community life would best be preserved
by taking every available opportunity for incorporating the
new buildings amongst the old. The alternative, the housing
estate outside the village, creates what is, in effect, a new
community with no community life, for the old village from
which it is segregated will contain all the things that it needs
if it is to be a unit of social life the places of worship, the
school, the post office, the few shops, the public houses, the
138 HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
bus stop, the village hall or community centre. All of these
things should be accessible equally to the new-comers as to
the older inhabitants if the former are to be absorbed into
the corporate life of the place, and the segregation inseparable
from the housing estate must make this very difficult, if not
impossible.
Villages differ in their aptitude for assimilating new
buildings without much expansion of their layout. A casual
inspection of those of the Survey area suggests that a 50
per cent, addition to the housing would be practicable in all
the smaller ones, while even in the larger ones a great deal
could be done to avoid unpleasing suburbs such as that which
has grown up against one of them. A pair here, a short
terrace there, a single house somewhere else, and so on
through the village, could add astonishingly in most places
to the accommodation, while at the same time assimilating
the new-comers into the village community instead of
segregating them from it. Incidentally, the cost of housing
would be reduced if the public services were already available
in the villages ; if not, the cost of providing them would be
less in the more compact area (see accompanying Plan).
The fifth point is a question of aesthetics. As has been said
already, the heritage of beauty is national, and it is for the
nation to foster and preserve it in any circumstances in which
it may be in jeopardy. Thus, while building in brick to-day
may be cheaper than building in stone, it may be suggested
that a decision to use red brick in a stone country would not
be justified. Those responsible for the further development
of the country-side may be urged to take a larger view of that
which is required. It would be cheaper to build two-
bedroomed houses or non-parlour houses, or to plan smaller
rooms, but no local authority to-day would dream of going
back on the higher standards of comfort and hygiene now
generally accepted, so as to economize a few pounds.
Similarly, the exterior of the house, both in design and
materials, should respect the local building tradition, even
though this may raise the building cost above the minimum
at which four walls and a roof could be provided. Seemliness
PLAN of two small villages, which
are united for local government and for
Church purposes. Total population 239.
No water supply, sewerage, or electri-
city
The plan suggests how 89 additional
houses could be incorporated without
upsetting the present form and charac-
ter of the villages, and pulling them
together, at the same time, by the
provision on a central site of a new
School and School-house, a Community
Centre and a Sports Ground o
Seal* of Fo*t
300
1000
cso*
^EXISTING HOUSES
CttnPRQPOSED J\DDtTiONAL HOUSES
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES 139
and harmony should be regarded as parts of the job of good
building, just as essential as damp-courses and water-closets,
and while it may well be that the majority of the people are
not consciously aware of the need and that a minority may
even prefer more garish effects, it must be remembered that
the housing contemplated may be expected to last for two or
three generations, during which standards of taste may
improve.
In the Survey area, a region of stone buildings, it was
reported that to face the new agricultural workers' houses
in stone would have added some 60 to the cost of each, and
.this could not be contemplated. A saving could have been
effected, equally, by omitting the baths or the cupboards or
the drains, and it may not be too much to expect that the time
is approaching when more people will consider that it is just
as much a social offence to erect an inharmonious building as
one that is unhygienic or ill-equipped.
This would call for some revision of building by-laws and
particularly of their interpretation; this points, again,
to the desirability of placing responsibility for the control of
building under an authority with experience wider than that
which can be expected of the District Council and its
officials.
The discussion, so far, has been limited to housing for the
working classes. A need may also be expected for larger
houses for members of the higher-income classes. In the
past these have been provided by the local builder, speculat-
ing on his own account, or by the intending occupants them-
selves, but not by the public authority. These villa residences
are not infrequently the worst feature of all in modern
village architecture, though it is one from which the villages
of the Survey area are fairly free. The erection of larger
houses in the future may be left tp private enterprise as in
the past, but subject to the same control of design and
materials as is suggested for the houses erected by the local
authority. Indeed, these conditions should be applied to
buildings of any kind erected within the village or its
precincts.
CHAPTER VIII
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
INTRODUCTION. ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS: Ownership; Types of
School; Sites and Buildings; Heating, Lighting, and Sanitation;
Playgrounds and School Gardens; Equipment; Teachers; Curri-
culum; Health Services; Difficulties of the Country School.
SECONDARY SCHOOLS: The County School; Endowed Schools;
Continuation Classes. ADULT EDUCATION. TECHNICAL EDUCATION.
THE COUNTY LIBRARY. RECONSTRUCTION : The Education Authority ;
Primary and Secondary Schools; County Colleges.
A. EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
THERE seems little doubt that the organization of education
in the Survey area is ripe for reconstruction, quite apart from
the far-reaching national changes visualized in the new
educational proposals now under consideration. Inequality
of opportunity, the lack of central and continuation schools,
unsuitable sites, buildings, and playgrounds these set the
background for a description of the educational facilities now
available. It should be recorded, however, that this is not the
fault of the Local Education Authority, for all its attempts to
get agreement about the establishment of central schools in
the area have been opposed in one quarter or another, nor
have there been requests for improved school accommoda-
tion.
Briefly, the area is served by eleven non-provided elemen-
tary schools, with county secondary schools in the market
towns on either side, and two endowed secondary schools
within it, one of them for boys only. The two latter, of course,
draw their children mainly from outside the area, but they
have a certain influence on it, and some local children attend
them. There are at present no centralized senior schools,
and very little provision of any kind for adult education.
The ladder from the elementary school to the secondary
school is an examination taken by all children at the age of 1 1,
on the results of which places and scholarships are awarded.
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 141
The successful children continue and finish their education
in the modern, well-equipped, secondary schools of the market
towns, transport being provided by bus or bicycle ; the rest
proceed automatically to the senior departments of their own
or of neighbouring village schools.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 1
Ownership. With the exception of one which was endowed
some time in the seventeenth century, all the schools in the
Survey area are Church schools. Responsibility for their
upkeep and staffing is divided, therefore, between the County
Education Committee and the Church. The chief obliga-
tions now remaining with the Church are the apppointment
of teachers, the upkeep of the fabric of the school, and the
maintenance of playgrounds. Authority is vested in a Board
of Managers, usually six in number, four representing the
Church, one elected by the Parish Council, and one by the
County Council. The parson is usually ex officio a manager,
and the rest are mostly farmers and local tradesmen. Quite
often the managers are all men, but in some villages of the
Survey area wives of local tradesmen, retired schoolmistresses,
and other local women residents serve on the Boards.
The Church of England was a pioneer in elementary educa-
tion, and the majority of the children in rural England are
still taught in Church schools. It may be useful, therefore,
to record some recent pronouncements of the Board of
Education upon the efficiency of their organization to-day.
An embarrassing feature of the public system of education for
many years has been the existence within it of voluntary (or non-
provided) schools, the control of which is divided between the
Local Education Authority and the Managers. 2
Most non-provided schools are in old buildings. . . . Much
capital expenditure will be needed on those schools if they are to be
brought and kept abreast not only of present-day educational
requirements and aspirations, but also of modern standards of
hygiene, ventilation and the like. It will be beyond the financial
1 See list, p. 152.
2 Educational Reconstruction. Board of Education, Cmd. 6458, 1943,
Sec. 43.
142 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
resources of most Managers to meet unaided the bill which must
be met if children in voluntary schools are not to be denied the
advantages enjoyed by children in council schools. 1
Of the 753 schools still remaining on the Board's Black List of
Schools with defective premises, 541 are non-provided schools. 2
Illustrations of the arguments both for and against this
dual control may be found in the Survey area. Where the
managers are interested in the schools and take care in
choosing their teachers, there seems a good deal to be said
for it, but in some villages the managers meet rarely, fail to
discharge their obligations, and are purely obstructive. Lack
of interest, as well as lack of money, frequently lies behind an
unwillingness to co-operate. In one village in which a play-
ground is badly needed, nothing has been done, although the
County Council are willing to put up most of the money,
because no one of the managers is willing to take responsi-
bility for action. In another village, where money apparently
is available, the head teacher had to wait for months for a
reply to his request for repairs urgently needed to the porch
of the school, and other appeals for repairs and alterations
have gone unheeded. On the other hand, the head teacher of
another school said that her managers were always willing to
supply whatever was needed.
Much of the controversy about dual control centres round
the religious question. In Church schools, Scripture lessons
are given every day, the Catechism is taught, and the parson
has the right of going into the school to teach Scripture.
To safeguard the rights of denominations other than the
Church of England, parents may withdraw their children
from Scripture lessons if they wish. In effect, the only
children withdrawn are the Roman Catholics ; there did not
seem to be evidence of any real controversy between Angli-
cans and Nonconformists, although, of course, it may be that
this is explained by apathy. There is no general rule govern-
ing religious instruction by the parson. In one of the larger
villages of the Survey area he does not attempt it, 'because
the head teacher does not wish him to' ; in another he goes in
1 Educational Reconstruction, Sec. 46. 2 Ibid., Sec, 47.
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 143
once or twice a week ; in the smaller villages, where there is no
resident parson, the teaching falls to the- head teacher.
Types of School. All schools in the Survey area are of one
of two types: junior schools, taking children only until the
age of n, and schools which provide for children of all ages
up to 14. There are four of the junior schools, and seven
schools taking children of all ages. Seniors from the four
villages with junior schools only are sent to one or other of
the all-age schools. In two of the smaller villages the schools
have been closed recently for lack of numbers, and the
children go to nearby schools.
There are just over 900 children attending the schools in
the Survey area.
Sites and Buildings. All the school buildings date from the
period 1832 to 1875, and in some respects their founders
built too well. Strongly constructed stone buildings have
stood the test of time, but have condemned generations of
children to spend their schooldays in highly unsuitable
surroundings. While there may have been good reasons for
putting the schools near the church, it is very unfortunate
that this has meant so often that light is obstructed by trees
and that churchyards occupy the places where playgrounds
ought to be. One of the larger villages provides an outstanding
example of a bad site, for the school is now surrounded on
three sides by a churchyard, and it has no room for expansion.
At another place, where the school lies, as so often, directly
on the road, without any foreground, the main room loses
most of its light and all the sun by being built close to, and a
little below, the churchyard and its yew trees. Another school
is wedged closely between cottages, with no room for expan-
sion, and not much room for playgrounds. One seems to be a
pleasing exception, for it occupies an open site with a long
view over the valley below, but even here the rooms get
practically no sun, and the playground is placed precariously
on a slope, which is very treacherous in wet or frosty weather.
The impression left by visits to the schools is one of general
dissatisfaction with existing accommodation. 'Have you seen
the school at X?' asked one teacher, mentioning the name of
144 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
a village just outside the area of the Survey, 'Its buildings
are not nearly so good as the new pig-sties at Mr. A's farm*.
While this may be a picturesque exaggeration, conditions do
indeed call for much improvement. All the schools visited
have too little accommodation, five of them having only two
rooms. Rooms are very often too high, making heating and
ventilation difficult; windows are usually too small and
narrow, dating from the time when it was considered in-
advisable for children to be able to see out of them ; porches
or passages serve as inadequate cloakrooms; there is little
accommodation for washing, or for drying wet clothes; no
privacy for the teachers; no spare rooms for physical
training in wet weather, or for the visits of doctor, dentist, or
nurse. According to the estimates of the Board of Education,
all the schools have accommodation for more children than
those attending them at present. While this may be true of
cubic space per child, and the rooms are not actually over-
crowded, it does not obviate the major difficulty of teaching
several standards in one room.
Outside, most of the schools have been designed to har-
monize architecturally with the church. Inside, the visitor
is greeted by a stone passage complete with clothes pegs and
milk bottles. A door leads directly into the schoolrooms.
Consisting originally of one room, in all the schools visited
this is now divided unequally into two, by a wood-and-glass
partition which often is not soundproof. The bigger schools
have had other rooms added on, but the two rooms and a
passage are the provision in most of the schools in the smaller
villages.
Even in the larger villages conditions are far from satis-
factory. One of them provides a particular example of bad
planning. The one large original room, exceptionally lofty,
has been divided into two, and two others have been added
on, but all lead one out of another, so that a child or a class
may have to pass through two or three classrooms before
obtaining access to the outside of the building. The infants
at this school have two more modern rooms, one in particular
being large and well lighted, but the smaller room leading out
SCHOOLS
Above: Closed. Below: Hemmed in
SCHOOLS
Above: Juniors at play. Below: Built 1832
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 145
of it may be needed at any time when the health visitors
arrive, when children, tables, and equipment must all be
moved. One of the great needs here, and everywhere else,
seems to be for a good-sized room or hall in which these
inspections could take place, and where children could play
or have physical training in wintry and wet weather.
Another of the larger places, its school attendance raised to
226 children by evacuation, has not enough accommodation,
and, in addition to its own five rooms, is occupying other
rooms and halls scattered about the village.
The question of the future of the school buildings in this
area depends on the extent and character of the educational
reconstruction contemplated by the new Education Bill,
which will be discussed later ; but even to enable the schools
to exercise their present functions efficiently a great deal of
additional building and reconstruction would appear to be
necessary, judged by modern standards.
Heating, Lighting, and Sanitation. These depend mainly
on the public services available in the village, though the best
use is not always made of them. Lighting varies from village
to village. Where electricity is available, as in three of them,
it has been installed. Other schools still depend on lamps.
Artificial lighting, however, is not often important in school
hours.
Heating is generally by means of stoves, though some-
times by coal fires. The height of many rooms makes them
draughty and difficult to heat, though this was not a matter
of much complaint.
Very few schools have water laid on. At one which has,
its usefulness is limited, as the only tap is outside the building.
No schools visited have indoor sanitation, and the privies
are regular, and often prominent, features of the school
playgrounds.
Playgrounds and School Gardens. Most of the schools have
some sort of concrete playground, much too small in the
larger schools, and sometimes in bad repair. Some of them
have been able to rent rough playing-fields, but lack of equip-
ment due to war shortage makes organized games difficult.
146 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
School gardens are encouraged for the older children, and
gardening is very popular. Seeds and tools are provided by
the County Education Committee, which has always been
ready to rent land for gardens, but the head teachers prefer
to make their own arrangements about hiring suitable ground.
This leaves them free to sell the produce, and one school in
the Survey area made a profit of 80 last year from its garden,
enabling interior improvements to be made to the School.
Equipment. If there be any virtue in orderliness as a habit
to be inculcated, then the supply of cupboards and storage
space to village schools is of some importance. The selection
of most of the schools for emergency rest centres has added a
good deal to the miscellaneous paraphernalia that lie about,
but allowing for this, more storage space for ordinary school
equipment seems essential.
On the whole, the furniture is adequate, granted that
the dual desk is considered good and modern enough for the
village child. This type of desk is pretty general, and the
infants are well supplied with small tables and chairs.
Books and stationery present difficulties to the keen head
teacher. The allowance averages about 45. a year for each
child, and while it was not suggested that this was particularly
low in relation to urban rates, one or two teachers spoke
somewhat enviously of the more generous allowances under
the L.C.C. and of their increasing difficulties owing to war-
time prices. By contrast, the fee for books at one of the
secondary schools in the area may be so much as los. a term
But elementary schools which can show special need may
get extra money, and the Local Education Authority makes
allowances for handicraft and gardening.
Pianos seemed fairly general ; wireless existed only where
the head teacher had provided it himself. One head teacher
was planning whist drives to raise money to buy a wireless for
the school.
Schools seemed well supplied with pictures and posters,
and with handwork materials. Knitting and hand-weaving
were much in evidence. The use of pictures depends a good
deal on the skill and interest of the teachers, and one school in
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 147
particular seemed very fortunate in having an Infants' teacher
with great talent, her room being outstanding for the gay
pictures on all its walls.
Teachers. The most important single factor in any school
is undoubtedly the head teacher, and whatever improvements
there may be in the provision of educational facilities, the
personality of the teachers will remain the predominating
influence on the child. Salaries are lower in the country,
and while this represents no more than the differences esti-
mated in the costs of living in town and country, it may
narrow the field of possible teachers ; it does not necessarily
follow that the quality suffers, although qualifications and
training may well be below the best. The teacher who feels a
real vocation for the country will make his life there whatever
the conditions, though he will probably choose counties
where there are the best opportunities both for himself and
for the work he wants to do, and in this respect counties vary
very much. On the other hand, it must happen, often enough,
that the teacher in the village school is one who has failed to
obtain an urban job, while, in the county of the Survey area,
there have been instances in recent years of teachers who have
moved from schools in the country to others in the towns,
where salaries are higher. Much can be done to improve the
material conditions attaching to work in a village school and
the training which precedes it, but no reconstruction or
legislation can ultimately affect the quality of the work which
a teacher does.
The number of teachers in the schools of the Survey area
varies from one to six, according to the size of the school, but
the supply is not always adequate even for the minimum
standard allowed. War-time conditions are chiefly respon-
sible for the shortage, but where there is no satisfactory
teacher's house, and in some of the remoter villages, the
managers are often in difficulties. At one place, one teacher
had been in sole charge of the whole school of thirty-one
children, ages 3 to 1 1, for nine months, and had only recently
secured, by her own efforts, an untrained assistant. At
another, the staff was only maintained at three by the readiness
148 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
of the wife of a master at a secondary school to help. At a
third, two or three age-groups have had to be merged, where,
before the war, a larger staff enabled them to be taught
separately. The demands on a rural teacher are far more
numerous and various even in school itself than on an
urban one. Everything, from teaching to the organization of
national savings and the distribution of school milk, falls on
one or two people.
In nearly every school there is a certificated head teacher
a man in the larger schools, and a woman in the smaller as-
sisted by a varying number of trained and untrained teachers.
Two of the smaller schools have only uncertificated teachers.
The success of the school depends very greatly on the ability,
vitality, and keenness of the head teacher, and in this respect
the area seems well served. Three, especially, stand out, men
who are enthusiastic, full of ideas and ambitions for their
schools, keenly interested in the work and in the communities
around them. All married, they live near to their schools,
and out of school hours they seem to shoulder the burden of
every sort of peace- and war-time village activity.
It is more difficult, evidently, for women to establish
themselves in similar positions. The head teachers of two
schools live away from the villages, and do not seem to parti-
cipate, in anything like the same way, in the life of the com-
munity. Both, however, live in other villages, so that the
reason seems personal rather than distaste for the loneliness
or isolation of village life. Perhaps the happiest solution in
the smaller schools is found in the married woman teacher.
In one village the head teacher is the wife of a local farmer,
and by virtue of her position both in the school and in her
home she seems to be a real leader in the village community,
even though in the school itself she is coping with an im-
possible task. This solution, of course, is not possible in
those counties where the marriage ban is imposed.
It is difficult to assess the professional and mental isolation
felt by teachers in this area, partly because it seems to depend
a great deal on personal qualities. All appear to feel it in
some degree, and it is very much accentuated in war-time,
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 149
now that transport difficulties have curtailed visits to near-by
towns for entertainment and for cultural activities. Some of
the teachers serve on national committees of one sort and
another, and contrive ways and means of attending meetings.
It is the wives of teachers, perhaps, who suffer most from
isolation in communities where few people share their real
interests.
Almost all the teachers visited have a keen interest in rural
life, and most of them have a rural background, but with some
experience of teaching in towns. There did not appear to be
much co-operation between teachers of neighbouring villages,
though this may be due partly to war-time conditions.
Curriculum. In the junior schools, after the Infant stage,
the main emphasis is on a thorough grounding in reading,
writing, and sums, with some history and geography, scrip-
ture, music, handwork, and physical training. Along with
this training in the tools of education the child begins to
learn something about living in a community.
For all those children who stay on at senior schools, either
in their own villages or in neighbouring ones, the curriculum
is much the same, with the addition of more English subjects
and such science as the equipment of the school and the
qualifications of the teachers allow, together with gardening,
practical subjects, &c. Scripture lessons are given every day.
For practical subjects, there is a joint scheme in the Survey
area, so that all the boys are taken to one village for woodwork
and the girls to another for cookery. Only one of the larger
villages has its own facilities for these subjects.
Health Services. Children attending elementary schools
have three medical examinations during their years at school
one on entrance, one during their eighth year, and one during
their twelfth year. These examinations are held usually in the
schools themselves, as also are the annual inspections of teeth
and eyes, and any necessary dental treatment. The unsuita-
bility of the present school premises for holding medical
inspections is manifest. None of the schools visited has
rooms which can be set aside specially for the purpose, and
children and equipment have to be moved from one of the
ISO EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
classrooms. The absence of water must make dental treat-
ment difficult, as it does the treatment of any of the minor
injuries which children incur while playing. Before the war,
the Local Education Authority supplied trailer dental sur-
geries, to obviate the difficulties in the smaller schools, but
these are now laid up.
Milk is provided, either free or at reduced rates. Dinners
of two courses, 'befores and afters', are served in canteens
in six of the schools at a charge of 5^. a day, or 2s. a week.
These are appreciated, and children under n, from a
village in which the school has been closed, complained
emphatically that there was no canteen in the one to which
they were sent. It had been asked for, but the answer was that
the numbers were not enough to justify it.
Difficulties of the Country School. A Survey of any rural
area must demonstrate forcibly the inequality of educational
opportunities between town and country, and bring the
investigator face to face with the question: 'Why should the
fact that a child is born in a rural area limit his chances of
educational advancement?'
It is not suggested that the quality of teaching is in any
sense inferior, but there are certain problems in the present
system which no amount of wisdom and devotion can over-
come. How can a teacher deal adequately with six age-groups
in one room, as happens in one of the schools, with the boy of
8 and the girl of 1 3 ? 'The greatest problem in rural education',
said the teacher in another village school, 'is the difficulty of
teaching the backward child the child who needs special
attention and special subjects in the same class as the
normally intelligent child. 1
Such limitations on the adequacy of teaching mean that
the country child may well be handicapped when it comes to
the examination at the age of 1 1 for entry into the secondary
school. While the fact that a certain proportion of places are
reserved for children from schools in rural areas suggests that
the authorities consider this to be so, the evidence gained in
the Survey area is not sufficient for any general conclusions.
Certainly, the handful of children who have gone from its
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 151
village schools during the last few years to the County School, is
well below the average (9-5 per cent.) for the country as a whole.
The difference in opportunities which follows success or
failure in the entrance examination is fairly obvious. Success
opens the door to the fuller, more balanced, much more
interesting life of a secondary school, with its trained staff,
its 500 children, and every opportunity for specialization in
academic and other subjects, and with the way open to
universities, professional examinations, and the rest. Failure,
at present, dooms the child to the narrow experience of a
village school, with a few score of variously aged companions,
and one or two masters, or perhaps a mistress, for the rest of
his school life. Under the present system, children in towns
are better provided for than those in the country because
their senior schools are larger, with more children, more
staff, and better buildings.
It is not suggested that the answer is to make secondary
education as organized to-day available for every child. The
problem is to ensure that all children have equal oppor-
tunities and to provide a suitable alternative for those for
whom a specialized academic education is unsuitable. Re-
organization under the Hadow scheme has attempted, in
recent years, to improve the lot of the senior in the village
school, but it has not gone very far. The initial difficulty of
trying to teach too many ages in one room has been overcome,
in part, by moving seniors from most of the smaller schools
to larger schools near by. If the war had not intervened, a
somewhat bolder scheme might have been in operation by
now, as the Education Committee had planned a new senior
school for all the children over the age of n, from nine of the
villages of the Survey area. The school would have provided
accommodation for 280 children, drawn from an area reaching
up to 7 miles. Transport was to be by bus or bicycle.
In some villages there is strong opposition to the removal
of the senior children. In one there were several protest
meetings, and the children were kept away from school for
some time. It has been suggested, however, that this would
not have happened if the scheme had been properly explained
152
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
beforehand to the parents. The proposed new senior school
would undoubtedly receive a good deal of opposition from
some villages, particularly from the few which already have
large schools, or where parents do not like the idea of the long
journey or the long day for their children.
These are difficulties inseparable from the organization of
education in sparsely populated areas, and there are obvious
arguments in favour of centralized schools. The whole of the
educational system envisaged in the new Education Bill rests
on the assumption that the establishment of adequate primary
and secondary schools is justified, and in the absence of any
special arrangements for children of the rural areas it may be
assumed that it is intended to apply it both to town and
country. The new system is discussed more fully later in this
chapter.
Elementary Schools in the Survey Area
Village No.
No. of
children
Ages
No. of
rooms
No. of
teachers
I and 2
60
All ages up
3
' 3
to 14
3
226
All ages up
5
6
to 14
4
29
Juniors up
2
2
to ii
5
School closed
7
24
Juniors up
2
2
to ii
8 and 9
42
All ages up
2
2
to 14
10
36
Juniors up
2
I
to ii
ii
School closed
12 and 13
9i
All ages up
3
3
to 14
14
176
All ages up
5
6
to 14
IS, 16, 17
31
Juniors up
2*
2
to ii
19
90
All ages up
3
3
to 14
20
137
All ages up
3
4
to 14
*One room very small.
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 153
In quite another category, there is the problem of the
difficult and maladjusted child. Child Guidance Clinics are
to be found to-day in most large towns, where trained
psychiatrists may give advice and treatment. Segregation in
special schools is avoided except in extreme cases, and the
co-operation of the home is always sought. This service has
not yet extended into the Survey area, and the difficulties
of getting country children to the town clinics are obvious.
SECONDARY SCHOOLS
The County School. The whole of the Survey area is served
by the County Secondary School in one of the market towns
outside it. For some parts of the area, a school on the other
side would seem a nearer and more natural centre, but trans-
port is too difficult, for the railway system is inadequate, and
road transport either by bus or cycle too precarious in wintry
weather.
Methods of transport to senior schools from villages in the
Survey area vary, some children using the train, some buses,
and others cycles, which are provided under a special scheme
by the County Council.
The County School is a modern, well-equipped secondary
school providing an all-round education for children between
the ages of 10 and 18 years, and preparing them for School
Certificate, Higher Certificate, University entrance, and pro-
fessional examinations, and it is well staffed with specialist
teachers. In addition to classrooms and science laboratories,
the buildings include a good gymnasium, school hall, library,
domestic science rooms, and workshops, and there are
adequate playing-fields. The buildings, however, are not
above criticism; more space for some science subjects is
needed ; there is some adverse comment on the workman-
ship none of the doors fit properly and the buildings seem
unnecessarily noisy.
The curriculum is largely influenced by the need to prepare
children for the School Certificate examination, and while
this is a necessary preliminary for all those who want to
proceed to professional work, it may not be the best target for
154 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
many children. The headmaster expressed the belief, held
fairly widely to-day, that the examination system was ham-
pering the development of new educational theory, and that
the number of subjects required bewildered the ordinary
child. On the other hand, he said that most parents were
mainly concerned with getting for their children the kind
of education which would improve their earning capacity.
Endowed Schools. Both the endowed secondary schools,
the boys' and the co-educational, draw some pupils from the
area. It is interesting to note that several children have been
sent in the last year or so from the village school as fee-paying
pupils to one of them, the co-educational school an indica-
tion, perhaps, both of higher war-time wages and of an
increased appreciation of the value of education. The social
influence exercised by this school in its immediate surround-
ings is very remarkable.
Continuation Classes. There are no continuation classes in
the Survey area.
ADULT EDUCATION
It has been said that 'the measure of effectiveness of earlier
education is the extent to which in some form or other it is
continued voluntarily in later life', 1 and while there is much
truth in this, there must be opportunity for further education
as well as enthusiasm. Among the bodies providing adult
education through tutorial classes and extension courses
the Workers' Educational Association holds an important
place. In the Survey area only one village takes advantage of
the facilities offered, and it is the centre of a very flourish-
ing W.E.A. class. Attendances at lectures have averaged
between 50 and 60 in the past few years, and the members
are representative of all classes of the community. The
initial success of the classes may be attributed largely to
the enthusiasm and energy of a few people, members of the
Society of Friends, but its influence is manifest in the
1 Educational Reconstruction. Board of Education White Paper, Sec.
85. Cmd. 6458, 1943.
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 155
awakened social consciousness of the community in which it
flourishes.
TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Farming being the only considerable industry of the
Survey area, it is natural that any technical education within
it should be restricted to agriculture. In normal times classes
are arranged by the County Agricultural Committee, acting
through the Agricultural Organizer, in the market towns on
either side of the area, in subjects such as farm book-keeping,
the manuring of crops, the rationing of live stock, and so on.
These have been fairly well attended, and it is noteworthy
that they have attracted as many of the older as of the younger
members of the farming community. An attempt to organize
courses in one of the larger villages of the Survey area was
not a success.
The County Agricultural Committee offers scholarships,
or grants, to assist boys and girls of the age of 1 6 or over to
proceed to Farm Institutes or to Dairy and Horticultural
Schools. The demand for this form of higher education,
however, has not proved to be very great, either in the county
in general or in the Survey area in particular. Farmers are
still inclined to think that the best place of instruction is the
farm, and the fact that the grants offered do not defray all the
expenses of board and instruction in the various institutions
limits the numbers of those who might take advantage of
them.
THE COUNTY LIBRARY
There are County Library centres in nearly all the villages
of the Survey area. These are run by voluntary librarians and
local committees, and are open usually for one or two hours a
week. The books are supplied by the County Library in the
county town, and they are kept, nearly always, at the village
school. Most villages have adult and junior sections, and
supplies of both fiction and non-fiction works are available.
In addition to using the local centres, residents may make use
156 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
of the postal service with the county town, which provides
individual readers with three non-fiction books a month,
outgoing postage being paid by the library and return post by
the reader. By a national system of inter-borrowing between
libraries, any book required is readily procurable.
County Libraries were financed originally by grants from
the Carnegie Trust, and they are now a charge upon the
Local Education Authority, the grants available varying
widely from county to county. There is a paid staff, and the
County Librarian is entrusted with the whole work of select-
ing and buying books and of organizing their distribution to
the village centres. In war-time the work is particularly
heavy, for additional centres have been established at Army
and R.A.F. camps and at W.L.A. hostels.
In the County Library of the Survey area accommodation
is very limited, and the smallness of the staff limits the possi-
bility of much expansion. The library contains about 55,000
books and serves nearly 350 centres. Boxes of books for the
individual centres are made up in rotation, but difficulties of
transport, at the present time, mean that exchanges are only
possible twice a year. Supplementary parcels are sent when-
ever possible. There seems little doubt that more frequent
exchanges would encourage more reading, for the evidence is
that the demand for books is much greater after an exchange,
and falls away as the weeks and months go by.
The use of the library depends a good deal upon the energy
and enthusiasm of the local voluntary help. The centres in
the Survey area appear to be well used, and the records of
last year's issues show that the largest number of books was
borrowed in one of the smaller villages, with an average of
seven books per head.
The County Library system seems to work well, and it is
capable of much expansion. Better accommodation in the
county town, more trained staff, and more liberal grants are
obvious improvements which suggest themselves, and if these
could go hand in hand with better transport arrangements,
and more adequate accommodation for the local libraries,
perhaps in the village social centres of the future, there seems
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 157
little doubt that they could add even more to the enjoyment
and education of people living in the country.
RECONSTRUCTION
In view of the provisions of the Education Bill, 1943, the
reconstruction of the educational facilities in the Survey area
must be considered as a whole, for the Bill lays down that :
The statutory system of public education shall be organised in
three progressive stages to be known as primary education,
secondary education, and further education; and it shall be the
duty of the local education authority for every area, so far as their
powers extend, to contribute towards the moral, mental and
physical development of the community by securing that efficient
education throughout those stages shall be available to meet the
needs of the population of their area. 1
Actually, the Bill makes very little specific provision for the
application of this * statutory system' to rural areas, and if it
becomes law, the Local Education Authorities will have to
devise the most suitable ways of applying it in their own
districts.
The Education Authority. Under the new Bill, the Local
Education Authority for each county will be the County
Council, and for each county borough will be the County
Borough Council. The powers of the Local Education
Authority for the county are intended to include the provision
of education in municipal boroughs, and hence, in the Survey
area, the villages and their neighbouring market towns will
become one unit. At the same time, the powers of the County
Education Committee in its relations with the managers
of non-provided (now to be called 'auxiliary') schools are
strengthened in ways which should limit the possibility
of any obstructive action, while leaving the managers some
measure of control both of buildings, if they are able to meet
the cost of any improvements required, and of the provision
of religious education.
Primary and Secondary Schools. To consider, first, the
period of full-time education, the new system divides this
period into three parts infant, primary, and secondary.
1 Education Bill, 1943, 7 & 8 Geo. vi, Part II .7.
158 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
The infant and primary departments will be in one or separate
schools according to numbers, and the White Paper recom-
mends that every effort should be made to see that the pre-
mises and staffing afford the 'space, facilities and amenities
suitable for the full mental, social and physical development
of young children'. If the village schools in the Survey area
are to be brought up to this standard, very considerable
reconstruction will be necessary, and in some places complete
rebuilding.
From the primary school it is intended that every child
should proceed to a secondary school at about the age of 1 1 .
Equality of opportunity and a much broader conception of
secondary education are two of the main pillars of the new
scheme. Children will no longer be chosen on the results of
the competitive test, but will proceed to the appropriate
secondary school on the basis of their school records, in-
telligence tests, and in accordance with their parents' wishes.
Three types of secondary schools are visualized grammar,
technical, and modern all three types to have the same
status, with comparable buildings, amenities, and scales of
staffing. In this way, it is hoped that all types of capacity and
ability may be trained, and all children given the best possible
equipment for life.
It is an important part of the new system that there should
be facilities for transfer from one type of secondary education
to another, so that if a child should develop special aptitudes
later than the age of 1 1, these may be given full opportunities.
In rural areas it seems probable that the three types of
secondary education may all be combined in one building.
The sites of such schools will need special care and foresight,
and transport arrangements would need to be carefully
devised in consultation with parents. The whole question of
boarding schools as a part of the State system of education is
still under consideration.
At all stages of a child's school life it is recommended that
the State, through the Local Education Authority, should
take full responsibility for his health and physical well-being.
Medical inspections, medical treatment, the provision of
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 159
school meals and milk are to be obligatory on the Local
Education Authority.
County Colleges. Under the new Bill, the Local Educa-
tion Authority is also charged with the responsibility of
providing further part-time education. It is laid down that
the young person under 18 shall attend at a County College
'for one whole day, or two half-days, in each of forty-four
weeks in every year while he remains a young person';
alternatively, * where the authority are satisfied that continuous
attendance would be more suitable in the case of that young
person, for one continuous period of eight weeks, or two
continuous periods of four weeks each, in every such year'.
For the rural areas, the alternative of residential colleges
giving four- or eight-week courses seems infinitely preferable,
and this view was emphasized in the White Paper. Resides
solving the problem of transport, residential colleges could
be much more efficient and economic in building, equipment
and staffing, and they would overcome the physical difficulty
of attendance from distances for daily or half-day periods,
while enabling a much more worthwhile period of education
to be given.
For the county of the Survey, the Director of Education
produced, some time ago, a comprehensive and detailed
scheme. Instead of the twenty-seven schools which would be
needed if day-schools were visualized, he considers that four
residential colleges could serve the whole county, and they
would accommodate 4,000 students.
In each college the course would include instruction in the
same basic subjects English, History, Geography, Mathe-
matics, Science, Physical Training, with provision for Music,
Art, Drama, and Religious Knowledge. In addition to this
general education, each college would specialize in, and be
equipped for, different practical subjects, and the scheme
overleaf is suggested for the four colleges.
'Of these courses', the Director of Education suggests, ' "B "
would probably be attended only by girls and "D" by boys;
it is probable that "A" would be mainly attended by boys,
while "C" might appeal equally to boys and girls.' It is
i6o
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
estimated that about 140 students would be a desirable num-
ber for a course, and that a staff of 14 would be required to
cover the teaching of the basic, practical, and optional sub-
jects. A curriculum devised on the scheme as suggested below
would allow adequate scope for individual choice and capacity.
One of the arguments in favour of residential colleges is
that they would offer opportunities for experience in com-
munity life, in citizenship, and social training, and a recent
inquiry among the members of Women's Institutes in the
Survey area showed that a number of parents were anxious
for their children to have such experience.
College Practical Optional
A Wood and Metal- Building Construc-
work tion, Craft History,
Drawing, Mathe-
matics, &c.
Commercial, Craft
History, &c.
Farm Accounts, Sur-
veying, Craft His-
tory, &c.
Mechanical Draw-
ing, Mathematics,
Physics, Craft
History
Adequate premises for such colleges would be of primary
importance, and it is suggested that they should include
workshops for practical subjects, teaching rooms, a hall, a
gymnasium, a dining-hall, common rooms for students and
staff, canteen, library, chapel, clinic, sick bay, and dormitories.
In addition, there should be facilities for outdoor games,
physical training, swimming, and room for a garden or small
farm.
At any times when the colleges were not being used for
courses, they could provide suitable and valuable accommo-
dation for residential Adult Education courses and Summer
Schools.
Any discussion of the proposed County Colleges would
be incomplete without some consideration of the part which
the Village Colleges of Cambridgeshire are playing in the
education of the adolescent and of the adult. By their
B
D
Domestic Subjects
and Horticulture
Agriculture and
Horticulture
Electricity and En-
gineering
Basic subjects
English, History,
Geography,
Mathematics,
Science, Phy-
sical Training,
Art, Drama,
Music,
Religious
Knowledge
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 161
endorsement of Mr. Henry Morris's fine conception of rural
education combined with community life, the Cambridgeshire
Education Committee has anticipated, in some ways, that
which is proposed under the new Education Bill, while, in
other ways, it has developed its proposals still farther.
Briefly, Mr. Morris's idea was that it was impossible to
provide a full cultural and social life for every small English
village community, but that the problem must be approached
regionally. Further, that the regional community must be
organized round its educational institutions. In the result,
four Village Colleges were established in Cambridgeshire
between the years 1930 and 1939, each of them the centre of a
region comprising about ten villages.
The first purpose of the college is to serve as the senior
school for all these villages, transport being arranged by
bicycle or bus. But the buildings are equipped for much
more than this. Impington, the most recent of them, has,
in addition to the beautifully equipped school wing, a fine
hall, with stage and cinematograph projector, and an adult
wing, which provides accommodation for adult education;
music, dramatic, agricultural, and other societies; technical
training; recreational and country dancing; art exhibitions,
&c. For the young people there are clubs of many kinds,
and physical training. There is a library, which is part of the
County Library service, but it has also a permanent section
of its own ; and a large common room available to all students
and members of college societies and clubs who have reached
the age of 16.
By a happy arrangement, the local Village Institute was
incorporated from the start in the Impington Village College
its members use the general common room, and there are
billiard, card, and table- tennis rooms, and a darts alley.
A canteen provides school dinners, and it serves refresh-
ments, also, for meetings of classes and societies. There is a
committee room available for the use of all local associations.
Free transport was provided by bus to bring members from
each village to the college in the evenings, and a restricted
service is maintained even in war-time.
M
162 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
Each of the colleges is under the control of a Warden, who
is also the Headmaster of the Senior School, and he has the
assistance of an adult tutor. The corporate and democratic
life of the college is promoted by a Students' Council, con-
sisting of elected representatives of all the classes and societies.
It had been the intention of the Cambridgeshire Education
Committee to extend the provision of Village Colleges
throughout the county, to the number of about twelve in all,
but the war has postponed further action.
This new conception of community life seems, on the face
of it, to go a long way in the directions contemplated for the
education of the adolescent under the Education Bill. In
Cambridgeshire, obviously, it would be unnecessary and
probably undesirable to organize County Colleges indepen-
dently of its Village College movement. By the addition of
a hostel and a few more classrooms, a Village College such
as that at Impington could provide facilities for a County
College, and more, for the boys and girls attending it would
be getting a wider and better education, as members of the
larger and more varied community, than would be possible
in the more segregated life of the County College.
B. THE YOUTH SERVICE
INTRODUCTION; THE LEADERS; THE ADOLESCENTS; FURTHER
EDUCATION; YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS; MORAL WELFARE.
INTRODUCTION
When the consolidating Education Act was passed in 1921,
section 86 permitted the Local Education Authority to spend
money on equipment and out-of-school activities for school-
children, so that an energetic school staff could organize
clubs, meetings, or hobbies for the children who would other-
wise roam the streets and lanes between 4 p.m. and bed-
time. In 1937, the Physical Training and Playing Fields
Act permitted local bodies to apply for grants towards the
cost of providing and equipping halls, gymnasia, playing-
fields, and swimming-baths for the whole community. No
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 163
use has been made of any of these powers in the county of
the Survey area. Whatever had been done for boys and girls
up to 1939 was done by voluntary organizations the Scouts
and Guides, the Young Farmers' Clubs, &c. led and
organized by men and women who have given their spare
time voluntarily to the work, the money needed for the rents
of premises, equipment, cost of uniforms, and for travelling
being provided by the subscriptions of the members and
donations from private benefactors. Not until the threat of
world events in 1939 turned the attention of the Govern-
ment to the dangers, moral as well as physical, that were
likely to beset young people under war conditions, was public
attention drawn to the situation, neither were public funds
made available to support the work of the voluntary organiza-
tions, nor were the local authorities encouraged to assume re-
sponsibility for the welfare of their adolescents. A Board of
Education Memorandum (1486), issued on i November 1939,
urged local authorities responsible for higher education to
put into effect some plans for the immediate problems, with
an eye at the same time to a long-term policy, for 'the
social, physical, and recreative welfare of those boys and
girls between the ages of 14 and 20 who have ceased whole-
time education*.
THE LEADERS
Work of this kind calls for leadership, and Acts of Parlia-
ment cannot make leaders. Only in two of the villages of the
Survey area are there real village men who have offered
themselves to help in youth work, and unless a village has
a tradition of responsibility for the welfare of its adolescents,
a sudden demand for leaders in this delicate business will
produce no answer. It is responsible work no less than that
of leading a boy or girl through the formative years, supplying
any deficiencies in the home life, and correcting the adverse
effects of the dull and uncreative jobs with which the working
fife so often begins. This needs skill and understanding of
a high order. It is no wonder, then, that in these villages, in
which there has been no long tradition of leadership, the
164 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
war-time needs and opportunities have been met if at all
by new residents, mostly war-time evacuees, or by peri-
patetics from the market town outside the Survey area.
To depend on travelling leaders from the outside, generally
from a larger town, is one way of employing the resources
which a town should possess. In the Survey area it is the
war-time pre-service units which use this method. Officers
of the Air Training Corps and of the Army Cadet Force
come from the market town to each of the three larger
villages on two evenings a week, and a scout-master is said
to come occasionally to one of them. The travelling leader
has little time to know his members except in the meeting
times of the organization ; he comes representing the bigger
town, the call of which to the young people will be magnified
by his presence. The growth of mutual knowledge and
respect between the leader and led is retarded ; the members
cannot weave the personality of the leader into the fabric of
village life, nor does he add one more sympathetic adult to
the community. A resident leader has a chance in a small
village community of becoming, like the vicar and the school-
master, a constant factor in the life of the place, always
available for the members and their parents, knowing his
team under all conditions, and able to interpret the successes,
the follies, or needs of his young people to the less under-
standing and less sympathetic village adults; from all these
opportunities the travelling leader is excluded.
It has long been customary to look to the schoolmasters
as leaders among young people, but in most of the Survey
villages the schoolmaster is no longer to be found. The
separation of junior and senior schools, as recommended in
1926 by the Hadow Report, is now universally accepted.
In rural areas, as related already, where villages are not large
enough to support both junior and senior schools, it involves
the setting up of senior council schools in a few strategic
centres to which senior children of n to 14 years must walk,
cycle, or be taken by special bus from their own village
schools, which, up to that time, had contained all ages. The
educational value of this reorganization is not in question ;
THE SCHOOL BUS
Above: Juniors waiting for it. Below: Seniors leaving it
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 165
in its effects upon the social life of the children affected by
it and of the villages from which they go, it has been found
in many places little short of a disaster. The withdrawal of
the older children has led to the elimination from the village
of that which has proved often to be its most useful social
force the schoolmaster and his wife and family. For the
children this has meant the removal of the one person for
whom all of them had some consideration and respect ; for
the village, the loss of an irreplaceable voluntary worker in
every social institution and good cause. Even in those places
where the head teacher had always been a schoolmistress,
the removal of the seniors to a distant school has resulted,
it is said, in a general relaxation in standards of conduct and
behaviour during their hours at home.
It is reported generally in the Survey area that the senior
school children come back to their own village with an
acquired contempt for it and for most of that which goes on
in it. One head teacher said that before the reorganization
she used to open her school on two or three evenings a week
for boys and girls, both those at school and those who had
left, to come and sing songs round the piano, to knit, play
games, and to produce a concert for parents at Christmas time.
Since her seniors have been taken to a senior school, they are
no longer interested in these simple pursuits. They have not
learnt more intelligent ways for using their leisure, but they
will go back no longer to the building and to the teacher that
symbolize their junior years. In another village, it was said
that the behaviour of the senior children has deteriorated.
They no longer owe obedience and respect, now that their
own headmaster is some miles away, to any adult in their own
village, and the result is a tendency towards hooliganism.
In 'the small, hard-working, mainly agricultural villages, the
removal of the man school-teacher is an irreparable loss.
Boys of 1 1 years and over cannot be controlled in their spare
time, as a general rule, by the schoolmistress in charge of the
junior school. When the teacher does not even live in the
village, and there are examples of this, the last ray of hope
is extinguished.
1 66 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
Four villages in this area have headmasters, three of senior
schools and one of an all-age school. The old type of village
schoolmaster was a great figure in his small community ; he
trained the church choir, played the organ, served on the
Parish Council, organized most of the village activities, and
continually acted as liaison officer between the adult popula-
tion and its junior members. Whatever increase there has
been in the quality of the educational work in the central
school, centralization has had an adverse effect on the social
life of the contributory villages. Although one schoolmaster
was hopeful that the difficulties would be solved in time,
there is real cause for belief that these distresses may not be
the birth pangs of a new order, but rather the death throes of
the village as an individual community.
THE ADOLESCENTS
The boy on a farm works hard because he is the servant of
crops and beasts, which have their own pace in life, and needs
which cannot be subordinated to the convenience of man.
His day is a long one, and if his job be with animals he will
have to come back for milking on Saturday afternoon and
twice on Sunday, or to shut up the poultry late in the evening,
or to feed the pigs at stated times during the week-end. He is
entitled to a week's holiday in the year, not counting public
holidays. With a good master he will learn most of the
processes of the farm ; if he be mechanically minded he may
spend much of his time with the tractor. With a bad master
he may be given only the repetitive and uninteresting jobs.
When his working day is over, he will help his father on the
garden or allotment, when daylight permits.
Apart from farm work, there are a few local jobs to be
done at the village shops or garages, but most of the adoles-
cents in the Survey area travel to one or other of the two
market towns on either side of it, to work in the shops or
factories there. Transport is by bicycle, public omnibus,
train or for the workers in one factory a works bus. The
hours spent in travelling must be added to the working day,
so that the time spent away from home is the real measure
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 167
of the amount of labour that the adolescents sustain. Those
who cycle long distances in all weathers and in all conditions
of health may feel the strain, and the ill effects on growing
boys and girls are accentuated, sometimes, by inadequate
feeding arrangements. Until a municipal restaurant was
established in the larger of the towns, the diets of these boys
and girls would vary greatly. Those who could lunch at
good works canteens, or who took good sandwich packets
from home, were well off, but there were many others less
well served who could not afford cafe or restaurant prices
for more than *a bun, a cup of tea, and a long sit-down*.
Many have expressed the opinion that the chief desire of
the boys and girls is to enjoy the varied pleasures of the big
town. Some boys, it is said, join the pre-service units,
especially the Army Cadet Force, because it gives them the
opportunity of an occasional parade in the town. In one of
the smaller villages, it was said that the girls pick for their
boy-friends those who can talk most about it, its shops,
cinemas, and dances, and the farmer's boy is second in the
race in fact, the boys who stay most willingly on the land
are the sons of the farmers, not of the farm workers. The
appeal of the big town to adults is in the amenities that are
available. To adolescents it is partly in the better amenities,
partly in the wider range of activities and entertainment, and
partly in the feeling of being freer to choose and select
friends, gangs, clothes, and the like, and of having a measure
of anonymity.
A sex-distinction is shown in most homes, largely by the
mother. The boy is the favoured one, his meal is prepared
and cleared away for him, and except for helping in the
family garden or allotment he has no home duties. He goes
out with a single friend, or with a gang, to stand at a street
corner or to roam the lanes looking for things to investigate
and meddle with. If there be a chance of earning money, he
may help in a garage, or a bakehouse, or he may caddy at the
local golf course. One parson complained that the golf
course took away all his boys and youths on Sundays,
leaving none for the choir, Sunday school, or young men's
i68 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
class. Boys do not leave the village at night-time except
for some special purpose a class, a dance, or a parade.
The misdemeanours they commit are inside the village
boundaries, and the small number of probation orders which
have been issued in the Survey area means that most of the
offences which bring boys to the police courts are small
things, punishable by binding-over or by fine. Another
reason may be that each constable has more than one village
in his charge and the chances are that he will not be in the
one in which the crime is committed. The attitude of the
Juvenile Court magistrates is also an important factor. If
they be old and unsympathetic, they may tend to view offences
against property damage, trespass, and fruit-stealing
as premeditated crime and not as the result of lack of
opportunities for the right use of leisure. An outbreak of
gate-lifting in one of the villages was found to be the work
of the members of a pre-service organization. It was
annoying, but not a major crime. Hooliganism is noticed
more in a village than in a town, but there is no evidence that
it is more prevalent. The police order forbidding young
people under the age of 1 8 to enter public houses has not
made any great change in the drinking habits of the boys.
They rarely haunted the pubs before, for the reason that in
small communities it is difficult to get away from adults who
know them, and public opinion holds that such places are more
properly the refuge of the adult from the burden of family life.
The girl, on the other hand, who has finished her day's
work, has still much to do to help her mother in the home ;
she washes up, looks after the children, cleans the kitchen.
The lot of the girl in service is worse. Her free time comes
in the afternoon, when only those in similar occupations are
at liberty, so that her circle of friends is small. The domestic
in a farm-house is considered on the lowest rung of the
labour ladder, for she cannot specialize, and her help is often
called for in the dairy, pigsty, &c.
FURTHER EDUCATION
Although the public elementary schools in the Survey
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 169
area are, all of them, co-educational, boys tend to form gangs
until the age of 16 or more; the girls live in feminine circles
until they are about 15. The opportunities for these young
people to undertake any courses of study for the benefit of
their future lives are few. No public elementary schools in
the area organize evening classes, although the Education
Authority will give generous help to any group of not less
than ten people who want to study one subject. The
technical institute and the commercial schools of the market
town are some miles away, and even if transport were
available it takes an effort of will to travel a distance in the
evening. One boy and two girls were found, who were
preparing to cycle to attend a commercial school. Corre-
spondence schools are too expensive and bursaries are not
available for them from the Local Education Authority.
This is an improvement that could be made, with one
reservation. At present, all boys and girls who, at the age of
1 6, are not members of any voluntary organization approved
by the Board of Education, have to be interviewed by
representatives of the Local Education Authority and
encouraged, if there be no reasonable impediments, to
occupy some of their leisure time in some creative and
educational pursuit. In an area such as that covered by the
Survey, it taxes the ingenuity of the person interviewing to
find any such organization or pursuit. There were two boys,
however, who wanted to study, but were not able to set
about it without adult help, and for them two voluntary
tutors were found nearby to whom the boys go once a week,
at times to suit all parties. If grants could be made by the
Local Education Authority for correspondence courses,
conditional upon the discovery of the necessary voluntary
tutors, and if rooms in the schools could be set aside for
those whose homes are not conducive to work, they might
be of real advantage to many country boys and girls. It is
noteworthy that the idea of the tutors and their discovery
were due to an agency outside the village. Any realization
by the village community of responsibility for its adolescents
is still entirely lacking.
170 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
W.E.A. classes are technically open only to men and
women of eighteen and over, unless there be a Youth Section.
No such sections exist in the county of the Survey area. Even
young people between 18 and 20 need encouragement to
attend the adult classes. One of the parsons takes three boys
to a W.E.A. class in another parish, and keeps one evening a
week for them to drop in for discussion on the theme of the
lecture. This is the sort of thing which could be more widely
practised. There must be some people who could make their
homes small centres for informal education, or the scenes
of occasional meetings as happens in a policeman's house
in one of the smallest villages ostensibly for a specific
purpose, such as money-raising for the county hospital,
but also to give wholesome entertainment for the young and
old of the village in a pleasant family atmosphere.
YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS
The principal youth organizations in the Survey area, as
elsewhere, are the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides and their
ramifications; the Young Farmers' Clubs; and latterly, of
course, the pre-service units, the Air Training Corps and
the Army Cadet Force.
Membership of these organizations is set out in the
accompanying tables, one for the larger and the other for
the smaller parishes. The figures confirm, in the rhain, the
impression of apathy towards all social institutions in most
places in the area, upon which comment has been made
already. There is a record of lapsed Scout troops and Guide
companies, and here and there of boys' and girls' clubs.
At the present time, only one of the ten smaller villages has
any voluntary organizations at all. A few young people in
most places are members of organizations in other towns or
villages, but the largest contingent is no more than 8 out of
an estimated possible total of 48. It is difficult to assign
specific reasons. It is natural to suspect that those villages
without resident leaders, in the persons of the parish priest
and the school-teacher, would show lack of youth organiza-
tion, and parishes Nos. 5 and 18 seem to bear this out. On
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 171
the other hand, the two little places 15 and 16, without this
leadership and with only a junior school, make a better show-
ing than most. The combined villages I and 2 are outstand-
ing, where, under the leadership of the Society of Friends,
social activities of all kinds are well developed.
The larger places are not numerous enough for comparison.
.They would be expected to show a higher degree of youth
organization, but it may be pointed out, for what it is worth,
that the numbers in these three places show a wide range
both in organizations and in membership of them.
In the smaller villages the lack of anything to interest or
to encourage girls who are going out to work for the first time
is conspicuous. Girls of 16 repeat that they left the Girl
Guides when they left school at the age of 14, except the few
who were encouraged to become helpers responsible for
sections of the younger Guides. Leaving school marks for
them a dividing line between the child and the adult, and
adults are responsible people who organize other people's
lives. Yet the few Women's Institutes which meet in the
evening to enable the working girl to join, do not attract many
even when the programme is full of practical activities.
A boys' club or a girls' club will attract a large member-
ship if properly and expertly run. Once the excitement of
living in a lively community has been generated, it can lead
the members into many educational activities informally
organized; the special section of the County Library, the
Physical Training class, the First Aid group, and even the
Domestic Science group will flourish, but all these go down,
especially in this area, before the impact of the pre-service
organizations and the strictly practical Young Farmers'
Clubs.
There are many reasons for the success of the pre-service
unit for boys, some of which have been mentioned already
service of the country, the uniform, the attraction of machines
and fire-arms, the lure of parades in the market town but
the most important is that boys are being called to do a man-
sized job. Their officers hold the King's or the Lord
Lieutenant's commission, they work under and practise
172 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
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174 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
their own discipline, and they have no body of 'kids' imitating
them on a lower scale. When the older organizations try to
adapt themselves by creating special war-time activities, they
are always defeated and especially among the girls by the
presence of the junior tail', which makes it difficult for the
working boy or girl ever to escape from recollections of child-
hood. The Junior Red Cross 'and Junior St. John Ambu-
lance Brigade are not represented in the Survey area, but
their success in other parts is to be attributed to the same
causes as that of the pre-service units. One word of criticism
must be said. The pre-service corps do an admirable
practical job. They produce efficiency in the selected
subjects, they develop discipline and healthy bodies. Apart,
however, from any effects which these positive virtues may
have on the general characters of the boys and girls, the
pre-service units do nothing to stimulate either their intellects
or their imagination, or to help them towards an under-
standing of the problems with which they will be confronted
when the uniforms have been put off and they wait no
longer for the word of command. The voluntary juvenile
organizations, few of which are represented in this area, have,
by tradition, this educative and humanizing influence;
temporarily the demands of practical training have eclipsed
them.
There are two Young Farmers* Clubs in the area. Each
is led by a young man farming for a living. The officers of
both clubs are drawn from boys or girls of secondary school
education. It is said that this is always likely to happen in
the early days, but that eventually the council school boy or
girl will be ready to lead. The members range from 10 to
21 years of age, and they are drawn from several nearby
villages as well a6 from the central ones. The social distribu-
tion of both clubs is about the same, each being divided
equally among boys and girls who represent everything from
the leisured classes to the farm workers. Not all the members
are working on the land ; it is a hobby that appeals to several
industrial boys. Considerable interest is expressed by local
farmers who may expect to benefit from the Clubs' activities,
EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE 175
but these are only the more progressive men. Here is an
organization which has nothing to lose by the coming of
peace; it unites the scientific and mechanical with the
service of growing and Jiving things.
The Youth Service was brought into being snortly after
the outbreak of war :
to extend the recreational training of young people by assisting
the national voluntary organisations which have worked so long
and so well in this sphere, and by enlisting the assistance of Local
Education Authorities in increasing the opportunities open to
young persons to use their leisure wisely to their own advantage
and, in great measure, to the advantage of the war effort.
The Board of Education's White Paper, from which this is
quoted, goes on to say that it was clear from the start that the
Youth Service was not to be regarded simply as a war-time
expedient, but that it should take its place as an integral part
of the national system of education. JThe partnership which
is now being established between the voluntary bodies and
the Education authorities, through the Local Youth Com-
mittees, recognizes the principle of State assistance to
private enterprise which is characteristic of many British
institutions. Its testing time will come on the cessation of
hostilities, when thousands of young people, in pre-military
units or disbanded from other forms of national service, will
stand in need of all the help that can be given them if they
are to find a way of life which will make them both good
citizens and good neighbours.
MORAL WELFARE
The Church attempts to play its part in youth service
through the Diocesan Council of Moral Welfare. This is an
organization which undertakes preventive and rescue work
among children and young people in grave moral danger.
In the diocese of the Survey area the work began about
thirty years ago, and it has been expanding steadily until the
whole diocese is now covered. There is a Diocesan Council
and Secretary, with a number of affiliated associations and
176 EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
case workers, each being responsible for varying numbers
of rural deaneries. Cases are brought to their notice by
doctors, clergy, teachers, health visitors, probation officers,
and others, upon which they visit the home of the child or
girl concerned, to find out the circumstances and to advise.
The Council's work is increasing as it becomes more
widely known, and the County Health and Education
authorities make frequent calls upon the services of the
workers, both for individual cases and for the work of sex
education. War conditions have aggravated moral problems
in many ways.
CHAPTER IX
HEALTH SERVICES
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE: Ante-natal Care; Confinement;
Infant Welfare Centres; Vaccination; School Medical Services.
TUBERCULOSIS. INFECTIOUS DISEASES. VENEREAL DISEASE. THE
BLIND. MENTAL DEFICIENCY. HEALTH EDUCATION. HEALTH
VISITORS. NURSING AND NURSING ASSOCIATIONS. HOSPITALS: The
Workpeople's Hospital Association.
PUBLIC health services available in the Survey area, as in the
whole country, may be considered under the following
general headings : Maternity and Child Welfare ; Vaccination ;
School Medical Services; Tuberculosis; Infectious Diseases;
Venereal Disease ; the Blind ; Mental Deficiency ; and Health
Education. These services are independent of National
Health Insurance, and, with the exception of Infectious
Diseases, which are the responsibility of the local Sanitary
Authority, are all provided by the County Council. Patients
are expected to contribute towards the cost of most of them
iccording to their incomes, but a * means test' is not rigorously
ipplied and patients are never asked to prove that their in-
:omes are as stated. No payment is asked for the diagnosis or
treatment of venereal disease, and the health authorities are
so anxious to combat tuberculosis that treatment is generally
given free.
The County Infirmary, the local hospitals, and the District
Nursing Association have contributory subscription schemes
which are referred to later in this section.
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE
Ante-natal Care. There are no ante-natal clinics in or avail-
able to the Survey area. An expectant mother, however,
receives two examinations at her home from her own doctor.
If he should have to prescribe hospital treatment, she will go
to the Maternity Department of the County Infirmary, or the
doctor attending can call in a consultant specialist for a
domiliciary examination. Extra nourishment is provided in
the form of milk, and malt and cod-liver oil.
N
i 7 8 HEALTH SERVICES
Confinement. The confinement takes place either in
hospital or at home. The woman goes to hospital when there
are bad conditions in the home, when a difficult labour is
expected, and frequently for a first confinement.
There are two hospitals available for women of the Survey
area: the Maternity Department of the County Infirmary and
the Public Assistance Institution -in the nearby market town.
There are also two Cottage Hospitals. Country people prefer
to have their babies at home. In peace-time a Home Help is
provided to take over the patient's domestic duties, when re-
quired, during the period of her confinement. These Home
Helps are local women, known to and approved by the local
Health Visitor. Since the war, however, this service seems to
have died out in the Survey area. Local women cannot be
found who have time to spare to help in homes other than
their own.
In cases of complication a consultant doctor may be sent to
a domicilary confinement. Similarly, local medical help may
supplement, in an emergency, the services of the all-impor-
tant midwife. 1 At most country confinements the District
Nurse, or midwife, is the only qualified person present. She
has visited the patient now and then during the pre-natal
period, and will do so again for fourteen days afterwards.
How much attention she can give during the actual confine-
ment will depend largely upon other calls of the same kind
which she may have to make. The area of her activity, in
terms of population, is, therefore, of great importance.
Parishes within the Survey area share midwives with each
other, and with other parishes outside it. The table opposite
shows how each midwife is occupied.
A domiciliary post-natal examination is provided by the
patient's own doctor about four weeks after the confinement.
Infant Welfare Centres. There are four of these centres
serving the villages of the Survey area, situated at Nos. 3,
1 There is an Emergency Obstetrical Unit on duty day and night at
the County Infirmary, a sort of flying squad of personnel and apparatus
which may be sent for in cases of extreme emergency by the doctor
attending the case ; this unit appears never to have visited the Survey area.
HEALTH SERVICES 179
4, 14, and 21. These are comparatively recent institutions,
and they are well attended. In spite of the absence of trans-
port, women in villages where there are no clinics are pre-
pared to bring their children two or three miles to the nearest
one. Numbers would not justify the setting up of a clinic in
each parish, but one of the small local buses might be hired to
pick up women and children from the various parishes and
take them home again after attendance. 1
Parishes in Survey
area
Joint
population
Total population
served
i, 2, 4, 8, and 9
3 and 5
7, 10, n, 15, and 16
12, 13, and 14
17 and 20
19 and 21
,139
,347
860
,519
,234
,837
2,377
1,247
1,000
2,655
1,654
2,010
The figures are from the 1931 Census.
Children can have the benefit of medical advice at the Wel-
fare Centres from birth until reaching the age of 5 years.
They can also have food, in the form of dried milk, and pre-
ventive treatment in the form of diphtheria immunization.
The diphtheria immunization campaign has been particularly
successful in the county as a whole, roughly 80 per cent, of
the child population having been immunized. In the Survey
area itself an added impetus was given by the fact that in a
neighbouring parish the only child who had not been im-
munized contracted the disease and died of it. Hospital treat-
ment may be prescribed at the Infant Welfare Centres, and it
is given at the general and specialist hospitals of the county.
Domiciliary health services take the form of visits from the
Health Visitors, once a month for the first quarter, and there-
after quarterly if the child be normal; more frequently if
abnormal. For children between the ages of i and 9, who are
boarded out, Infant Life Protection Officers are appointed to
make quarterly visits of inspection. In the Survey area these
officers are the Health Visitors.
1 Such a scheme is operating successfully in an adjacent county.
i8o HEALTH SERVICES
Vaccination. This service is carried out by local general
practitioners, who are public vaccinators. It is performed at
the surgery of the doctor, and it is also a domiciliary service.
Parents in the Survey area appear to be indifferent to the
possible dangers of small-pox. In a district considerably
larger, which includes the Survey area, only 85 vaccinations
have been carried out since 1932.
School Medical Services. Children attending elementary
schools receive three general medical examinations. The first
takes place on entrance, the second during their eighth year,
and the third during their twelfth year. There is also an
annual inspection of their teeth, and inspection of their eyes
when defects of vision are suspected by the teacher and re-
quire attention. Dental treatment is provided on the spot ; but
for treatment of eye troubles and for the provision of spectacles
the children of the Survey area are sent to the Eye Hospital in
the county town.
Medical examinations of all kinds are held in the schools,
unless more suitable accommodation is available, such as in
a village hall. In the Survey area, as in many rural districts,
a classroom in the school is generally the only place both for
the examinations and, for dental cases, for subsequent treat-
ment. This means turning out a class at best, or closing the
school, if it be virtually a one-room school. In these places
treatment proceeds with the maximum of difficulty for the
practitioners. There are no facilities of any kind ; even water
is not always available, and the dental surgeon's assistant may
have to fetch it in a bucket from the nearest well or stand-
pipe. It is only fair to add that in peace-time a mobile
dental clinic, carrying its own water-supply, is employed.
The practice is to serve notices upon the parents of children
requiring treatment, who are asked to sign forms of con-
sent. If they do not, treatment is withheld. Evidence of
the appreciation by parents of services available to them was
not collected in the Survey area, but it may be worth record-
ing that a dental surgeon in an adjoining county reported that
rather more than 50 per cent, of the parents refused to allow
their children to be treated. It was satisfactory to learn, how r -
HEALTH SERVICES 181
ever, that this reluctance was less noticeable among the
younger mothers. It may be taken for granted that the little
patients themselves are non- co-operators, and they are in-
clined to produce the formula Mother doesn't want to have
me done after all'.
In difficult or lengthy cases some school dentists will try to
arrange for children to be brought on another day to a neigh-
bouring school for completion of the treatment. Here again
there are diiferences in the degree to which parents are will-
ing to co-operate, some being ready to make even difficult
cross-country journeys to get further attention for their
children, while others will not be bothered.
Secondary school children, if they be holders of scholar-
ships or 'necessitous cases', receive free inspection and
treatment (where needed) of tonsils, teeth, and eyes.
The last, and perhaps the most important, of the school
health services is that which prevents, or cures, nutritional
defects namely the provision of free meals at the school.
There are canteens for this purpose only at six villages in the
area.
TUBERCULOSIS
The County Tuberculosis Officer is available as a con-
sultant physician at the patient's home, or at the T.B. dis-
pensary in the market town, where X-ray examinations are
also carried out. He, or any qualified practitioner, can order
an examination of specimens of suspected sputum.
The local health authorities provide extra nourishment in
the form of milk, and also open-air shelters at the patients'
homes, when these are required. For sanatorium treatment,
patients living in the Survey area would go to the county
town, and, under a very recent scheme, maintenance allow-
ances are paid to patients of the sanatorium to compensate for
loss of earnings. Surgical cases are sent to a specialist hospital .
'After-care' services are usually undertaken by voluntary
organizations ; they comprise the provision of work, and of
the means to work, in the form of garden tools, seeds, &c.
Quite recently there has been appointed a Rehabilitation
1 82 HEALTH SERVICES
Officer whose duty it is to consult with managers of works
with the object of finding suitable employment for ex-patients.
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
All cases of infectious diseases must be notified, by the
doctor attending, to the Local Sanitary Authorities.
Small-pox cases are sent to the Isolation Hospital on the
other side of the county.
Cases of scarlet-fever, diphtheria, typhoid and, occasion-
ally, complicated measles, go to the local Isolation Hospital,
where they are attended by a non-resident doctor.
Cerebrospinal fever, acute poliomyelitis, acute polio-
encephalitis, acute encephalitis lethargica, and typhus are sent
to a hospital near the county town, where there is a resident
doctor and up-to-date equipment for dealing with such cases.
Ophthalmia neonatorum and puerperal pyrexia are treated
by the welfare authorities, under their Maternity and Child
Welfare Schemes, at the Eye Hospital and at the County
Infirmary respectively.
VENEREAL DISEASE
A free pathological examination may be obtained from
qualified practitioners who may call in the consultant services
of a specialist. Free treatment is provided at a clinic, the one
nearest to the Survey area being in the county town, or it
may be given by an approved doctor, of whom there is one in
the area, either at his surgery or at the patient's home. An
approved doctor is one who has taken a post-graduate course
in V.D. treatment.
Venereal disease does not present a serious problem in the
Survey area. Severe cases would go as in-patients to the
County Infirmary, and expectant mothers, found to be in-
fected, would be sent for their confinements to the Lock
Hospital, London.
THE BLIND
Blindness in the country districts of the county occurs
chiefly among the elderly and the aged. 1 There are not any
1 In 1940, of the 198 blind persons in the county, 118 were above 65
HEALTH SERVICES 183
Homes for the Blind in this county, but there are a number of
schemes for blind home-workers, under which work is
organized in the form of materials and supervision, the
articles produced are sold, and financial assistance is provided
to guarantee income. The incomes of the unemployable
blind are made up to 22s. a week, in addition to rent. There
is only one home-teacher of Braille for the county.
MENTAL DEFICIENCY
Mental defectives in the Survey area are no more numerous
than in other parts of the county. Country people are re-
luctant to hand over control of such children, and as a matter
of policy the health authorities do not put pressure upon
them if it can be avoided. The problem differs somewhat
from that in the towns, where sub -normal children may be
led into trouble, and segregation is necessary for their own
protection. There is, however, a lack of accommodation for
those defectives who are subjects for treatment under the
Mental Deficiency Acts.
HEALTH EDUCATION
This is the most recently organized service, and little com-
ment can be made upon it as yet. One or two talks on health
and hygiene have been given in the Survey area by an Assistant
Medical Officer of Health of the county, appointed for this
purpose. These talks appear to have been very well received.
The wireless has done more than anything else to bridge
the gulf between town and country people in matters of
general health education, and the villagers of the Survey
area do not appear to be any less well informed as to the
diagnosis or treatment of ailments than are their town
neighbours. Nor, on the whole, are they unaware of the
health services which are available to them. They are in-
formed of these by the local doctors, district nurses, and
health visitors, and the information passes from one to
another.
years of age, and of these, 90 were above the age of 70. Hardly any were
under 21. (Cf. Annual Report on County Health Service, Pt. 2, p. 17.)
184 HEALTH SERVICES
THE HEALTH VISITORS
In connexion with some of the foregoing services, valuable
advisory and supervisory work is done by Health Visitors.
There are twenty of them in the county (population 129,000)
of the Survey area, in which two of them operate. Health
Visitors are concerned with children only up to the time at
which they leave school, with tuberculosis cases, and with the
blind. They conduct hygiene inspections, and attend the
medical inspections at schools. They follow up defects, and
see that the children are receiving the treatment prescribed.
In cases of tuberculosis, it is for them to see that proper
nourishment is being obtained and the treatment followed;
they also advise on home conditions.
The qualifications required of Health Visitors in the
Survey area are threefold. In the first place, they must be
either State Registered Nurses or they must hold a certificate
of three years' training in a General Hospital. Secondly, they
must hold at least Part I of the Certificate of the Central
Midwives' Board. Thirdly, they must hold the Health
Visitors* Certificate.
NURSING AND NURSING ASSOCIATIONS
Home nursing is looked after by a County Federation of
Nursing Associations, and by the District Nursing Associa-
tions, most of which are federated to it and receive grants from
it. It would seem that the interest of people of leisure may
be needed in running country Nursing Associations. Diffi-
culties are apt to arise in co-operation between villages to
share the services of a nurse, though the Survey area provided
an exception to this generalization, where its most progressive
and best administered village seemed to be in favour of a
larger area, as they then could have two nurses who covered
midwifery and general nursing separately. At present, it was
said, old people and ordinary patients are apt to be neglected
when a midwifery case is on hand. There may be some basis
for the objection to collaboration between villages to main-
tain a nurse, for she can live only in one of them, and the
other, or others, 'see little use in a nurse who is not at hand'.
HEALTH SERVICES 185
One group of three small villages, lying closely together, has
an association which is not affiliated to the County Federation.
They refused to share a nurse with a larger place, although
this meant losing the grant from the County Federation, be-
cause she would be living there and they felt that she would
be so occupied with its cases practically on her doorstep
that she would have little time to attend to them. These
three villages have an extremely popular District Nurse,
and the present arrangement was built around her in fact,
all the District Nurses in the Survey area are very popular,
and the quality of their nursing is spoken of with great
appreciation.
HOSPITALS
The parishes in the Survey area are served by the General
Hospital in the market town, and there are also two Cottage
Hospitals. Cases of exceptional difficulty may be sent to the
County Infirmary, and there are specialist hospitals and
sanatoria available as required orthopaedic, ophthalmic,
infectious diseases, and tuberculosis. There is a contributory
scheme in operation in the area.
The Workpeople's Hospital Association. This is a contribu-
tory scheme organized in connexion with the local General
Hospital. The Association has a unit in each village, or
group of small villages, with a President, Secretary, Treasurer,
and a Committee, the officers being elected by the Com-
mittee ; each unit decides, to a large extent, how it will run
itself, how it will raise funds, &c. In some of the villages of
the Survey area, the committees do very little, leaving the
work to the officers one of them was said not to have been
summoned since its first meeting but others are fairly
active, meeting regularly and making their own rules.
The Association was founded in 1909, and it claims to have
been the first hospital contributory scheme in the country.
It produces the greater proportion of the funds of the hospital
and is strongly represented on its committees, which gives
it a considerable measure of control. Before the war, the
1 86 HEALTH SERVICES
Association ran a big annual procession and fair, to which
large numbers came from the outlying villages.
There is another organization, the General Hospital Village
Representatives. These are responsible for Pound days, egg
weeks, rose days, and so on. They may be associated with
the Workpeople's Hospital Association, but generally they are
not. The Hospital Village Representatives are more likely to
be drawn from the leisured people of the villages, or those
interested in charities, whereas the representatives of the
Workpeople's Hospital Association are themselves nearly
always working people. The Hospital Village Representatives
and the Workpeople's Hospital Association both get up social
events, such as dances and whist drives, to help the hospital.
A reciprocal arrangement has been in force for some years
between the local General Hospital and the County Infir-
mary. If a subscriber to the local hospital be sent to the
County Infirmary for treatment, the appropriate payment is
remitted ; similarly, if a subscriber to the County Infirmary
scheme should chance to need treatment in the local General
Hospital, payment will be made the other way. More
recently, this reciprocity has been extended to cover treat-
ment at the specialist hospitals.
The contributory schemes are very popular; membership
in rural districts of the county of the Survey area is about
80 per cent, of the people, a proportion somewhat higher than
that for the whole county. Local patriotism can be exploited
to raise funds for the hospitals, and country people in remote
places will make every kind of arrangement to facilitate the
payment of subscriptions for hospital benefits. After all,
* Nobody will mind if they never need them!'
The main criticisms of hospital services are of the delays in
admission and of the difficulties of transport from the remoter
places. As to the former, the plain truth is that the hospitals
have not been able to keep pace with the abnormal increase
of population in the locality, particularly since the war, but
there is a strong feeling amongst the people of the Survey
area that townspeople gain admission more readily, being
nearer at hand and able, therefore, to bring more pressure to
HEALTH SERVICES 187
bear upon the authorities. It is a general complaint, too, that
the out-patients 1 departments of the hospitals are congested,
and long periods of waiting are entailed. This presses par-
ticularly upon the country folk, who are controlled by the
transport position. The hospitals do what they can by making
appointments for out-patients, which are adjusted, so far as
possible, to the transport services available to them.
Transport to the hospital town to-day may be a serious
problem. The health services available to dwellers in the
rural areas differ little in character from those available in
towns, but the distances which may have to be covered for
diagnosis or treatment are generally very much greater for the
country folk. It is true that more domiciliary health services
are provided for country people than for those living in towns,
but for many ailments, and those the more serious ones,
journeys haye to be made to the market or the county towns.
Even before the war, public transport services to and from
the Survey area were inadequate, but patients could often
have the use of private cars. In war-time most of these are
laid up, and the reduced public services lead to so much
crowding that it is often impossible to board the buses. The
inhabitants of parish No. 5 have no bus service at all. On the
other hand, the war-time voluntary Car Pool scheme will
supply cars for * urgent medical purposes' upon the authoriza-
tion of a medical officer.
There is no doubt that the difficulty of convenient and
speedy transport of patients to the hospitals could be miti-
gated by a reform of the ambulance organization. At the
present time there are no fewer than nine authorities in the
county providing ambulances, some of them public, some
voluntary, and all of them entirely unco-ordinated.
CHAPTER X
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH: Church Attendance; The Clergy;
Parsonage Houses; The Parish Magazine; The Parochial Church
Council ; The Parochial System. THE FREE CHURCHES. THE SOCIETY
OF FRIENDS. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
ANY consideration of social life in the villages must take
account of the influence of religious organizations. The
Church itself was for so long a vital force in national life in
material as well as in spiritual things, and the other religious
bodies that have grown up round it in more recent days have
influenced men and affairs so much, that it is impossible to
avoid the rather difficult task of making some assessment of
the part which all denominations are playing in rural life
to-day, and of the scope for further service by them.
THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH
In almost every village in England the parish church is the
architectural focus. So as far as there appears to have been
any planning, the church is the centre of it. Its tower or spire
dominates the scene, and in its architectural form and the
mere solidity of its masonry it suggests a permanence, a con-
tinuity, which make it part and parcel of the land and of the
life which the land supports. This explains, in some measure,
the difference in attitude of the townsman and the country-
man to his church. In the large towns, church life is congrega-
tional, it has ceased to be parochial, but while the townsman
often will not know who is his vicar or which is his parish
church, the villager cannot help knowing. Consequently,
countrymen talk more naturally about the church and church
affairs than the townsfolk they are not embarrassed when
talking of such things, and although they may not always like
their parson, they accept him as being a part of village life.
The men, for example, talk about him and the church as they
do about the local doctor or the schoolmaster, and their work.
Most of the people have been baptized in the church, they are
PARISH CHURCHES
CHAPELS
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 189
married in it, and they are laid to rest in its churchyard when
they die. They are not, they cannot be, so indifferent to the
church as townspeople can be and so often are. In the Sur-
vey area the churches are beautiful, and some of them of
great architectural interest. Generally they appear to be well
cared for.
Church Attendance. This is not to say that the churches
are flourishing in the villages or that attendances at public
worship are substantially higher than in the towns. Indeed,
attendance at churches and chapels in the Survey area seems
to tally more or less with the estimated average for the whole
country, of 10 per cent. Attendances at chapels and non-
Anglican services are normally a little lower than those at the
parish church, but there is not a great deal of difference. The
village in which religious observance was highest had approxi-
mately the following attendances at Sunday services for a
population of just over 1,000: Anglicans, morning, 70,
evening, 100; Roman Catholics, 30 and 40; Methodists, 20
and 40; Baptists, 10 and 15 a total for all denominations of
130 and 195. This is well above the average for the area as
a whole. The other two large parishes in the area have smaller
church attendances, the average congregations for the various
places of worship in each not totalling, probably, much more
than a hundred, except on special occasions.
In the smaller parishes very few people are said to attend
church or chapel. 'Very often in the morning there are only
three in the choir and one other. The collection for the whole
day amounts sometimes to only 2s. ' An interesting case is
that of a parish which comprises two villages, in one of which
there is no parish church, so that the people in this village
have to walk over a mile to church. Here the average
attendance is about thirty out of a combined population of
over 400. Another village, with a population of about 250,
does well if the church attendance runs into double figures,
and in two others in the area attendances seem to be about
10 per cent. At a third, where attendance at church and
chapel is very low, there is a very active Meeting of the
Society of Friends.
i 9 o RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
Congregations consist mainly of elderly people, the
majority of whom are women, but the absence of many young
people of both sexes on national service at the time of the
Survey may account for this in some measure. The dearth of
young people is particularly noticeable in the Free Churches.
At first sight this is rather surprising, for, on the whole, the
Free Church Sunday Schools- are better attended than the
Anglican. It appears that, where there is choice and
the parents have no fixed convictions, the children go to the
chapel Sunday School. But they leave the Sunday School at
about the age of 14, and if they continue to go to a place of
worship after that, it is usually to the parish church. The
reason probably is psychological. Unless a young man or
woman have strong nonconformist convictions, they attend
the parish church because this gives them more standing in
the village it is still the thing to do, if you attend a service,
to go to church rather than to chapel. The young people
know that they will meet more young people at the parish
church than, say, at the Methodist chapel, where the aged
usually predominate. One man went so far as to say that he
thought nonconformity would die out, because there were no
young people in the chapels.
Apart from this difference in church and chapel congrega-
tions, both are much the same in status and sex, with a
tendency for the more well-to-do to attend the parish church.
Often the chapel is 'run' by one family, succeeding genera-
tions of which have probably run it ever since it was built.
The critic of nonconformity concludes from this that the
village chapel is theirs, and that they are apt to resent any
intrusion on their preserves. There is a certain amount of
truth in this, but remembering the financial difficulties which
all nonconformist bodies have had to face, it is not easy to see
how the village chapels could have been maintained without
the support of at least one influential family.
The church-going habit is said to be nothing like so strong
in the villages as it was fifty years ago. *I can remember
when farmers and farm labourers went regularly to church ;
now you'd be lucky to find one farm labourer.' But there is
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 191
this to be said for the attendances nowadays a good pro-
portion of those who go to church do so out of conviction,
whereas formerly many people attended either because it was
the custom or under compulsion. Nevertheless, attendances
do vary according to the type of incumbent. As one old man
said, 'A great deal depends on the vicar as to whether the
congregation is large or small'.
The Clergy. There is no doubt that the task of the country
clergy is often particularly trying. Even the most hard-
working priest will have his work cut out to inculcate into the
majority of his parishioners the church-going habit. Public
opinion in country places is very strong, even if it be not often
expressed, and if the majority decide not to go to church it is
not easy for individuals to maintain their regularity of attend-
ance. In a few of the parish churches of the Survey area the
attendance has got to a very low ebb. The incumbent of one of
them remarked sadly upon it himself. The congregations at
the church do not often reach double figures, except on
special occasions.
When criticism was forthcoming, it was generally on the
grounds either that the form of the service was too extreme
for the traditions of the parish or that the sermons were, in
effect, dogmatic and philosophical rather than practical.
Much more is expected of the country parson than taking
services and visiting his parishioners, although there is a lot
of truth in the saying 'a house-going parson makes a church-
going people'. Of course visiting can be overdone, or done
in the wrong way, but the parson who does it properly,
entering the homes of all his people impartially and being
ready with help and advice wherever he is. wanted, will
soon become an indispensable part of village life. The vicar's
influence in a village community can be immense ; even those
who never go to church will value and respect a man who has
proved his worth.
A country parson should interest himself in everything in
which his parishioners are concerned though not necessarily
to participate or even to approve whether it be allotments,
pigs, the dramatic society, the local rates, the collection of
192 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
salvage, pubs, or football pools. Such a one is to be found in
what is perhaps the best organized community in the Survey
area. Everyone pays tribute to his energy and to his active
participation in the social life of the village, including the
nonconformists, with whom he is good friends. His church
is the only one in the area in which a fair proportion of the
congregation is composed of men.
Parsonage Houses. It is only by mixing with the people that
a parson can gain their confidence. One of the biggest
obstacles, often, to mixing easily, is the size of the rectory
and vicarage houses. Nearly all the clergy agree on this point,
and would be thankful for any scheme that gave them each
a small, modern house in place of the great inconvenient
houses in which so many of them have to live. These give an
impression of wealth which in most cases is false, and thus
they tend to create barriers between priest and people a
point which was made very strongly by one of them. A few
of these big houses are dignified old buildings with archi-
tectural merits, but many of them were built in the spacious
mid- Victorian times when tithe was high and labour was
cheap, which was not the best period of architecture either
for style or planning for economic working. They tend to
identify the clergy with the propertied classes and a social
order which is rapidly breaking down, to say nothing of the
grievous financial burden they impose, and the heavy
domestic strain on the parson's wife.
The Parish Magazine. This is usually a very dreary affair.
The magazine for the churches in the Survey area is the local
Rural Deanery Magazine, which circulates among some
twenty churches. The inset called 'Church and Home' is
published by the S.P.C.K., and six to eight pages of local
matter are inserted, to cover all the churches. Each parish
supplies notes of its activities, and the present paper shortage
is partly responsible, no doubt, for the dullness of the matter.
Nevertheless, even under present conditions it ought to be
possible to produce a more lively publication. The parish
magazine furnishes an opportunity of getting a message across
to people in the village who do not come to church an
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 193
opportunity which seems rarely to be used. The church
notes seem to be restricted to a births, marriages, and
deaths column, and details of the weekly collections. A direct
message from the pastor to his flock is rarely to be found.
The Parochial Church Council. If the livings which the
Church provides for its servants are poor, the fact that the
parson has a life tenure is some compensation; no one can
dispossess him while he lives. Moreover, he reigns as an
absolute monarch in his own domain; no one can interfere.
It was to bring the parishioners more into touch with
parochial affairs that the Parochial Church Councils were
constituted.
An electoral roll of professed churchmen is compiled for
each parish, from which the Council is elected annually.
The name of any prospective incumbent must be submitted
to the Parochial Church Council for its observations before
the Bishop will institute him to the benefice. By this it is
intended to give the parishioners, not a right of veto, but an
opportunity to indicate their views upon the fitness of the
patron's nomination for their particular parish. Otherwise
the duties and privileges of the Council consist mainly in
relieving the parson of some of the responsibilities which the
laity might well assume the care of the church and church-
yard, the administration of ecclesiastical charities, and so on.
Inquiries in the Survey area suggested that the Parochial
Church Councils have not affected church life very much.
One incumbent said that when election to it was from the
rank and file of the churchmen and women of the parish, the
Council was more likely to be interested and active than when
it was somewhat dominated by those of more social considera-
tion. Another expressed a view exactly contrary. A third
found it useful when he wanted support for some change or
fresh activity. Still another said it was quite useful in taking
the financial business of the church off his hands.
In the very small villages it is doubtful if the Parochial
Church Councils function at all.
The Parochial System. This Survey provides further
evidence of what has long been recognized in the Established
o
194 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
Church, namely, the virtual breakdown of the parochial
system as the basis of organization. The Survey area is
typical, more or less, of conditions as they exist all over
England, that is to say, a system of staffing the Church and
of paying the workers which is not based, even remotely, on
the extent of the work to be done. In most of the country
parishes of England, as in the Survey area, there is not
enough work to employ the parish priest, probably, for even
half his time, and while the stipend is often quite inadequate
to maintain him in a position not overburdened with material
cares, it may represent, nevertheless, a reward which is out of
all proportion to the services rendered. Nor is there any
parity between parish and parish, either in the work required
of the priest or in the payment for it. In the Survey area one
incumbent with a cure of less than 500 souls has an income
twice as much as that of another with a parish of 1,200, and
nearly twice as much as that of the vicar of a nearby market
town with a parish of 1 1 ,000 souls.
Thus, the case for considering the reorganization of the
parochial system is based on the assumption that the rural
parish is too small a unit, in many places, to provide a full life
and a sufficient opportunity for the incumbent, and that its
endowment is often too small to provide him with a reason-
able living. As a problem, it has received general recognition,
and nothing, probably, has occupied more of the time of the
Church Assembly in recent years than the consideration of
proposals for its solution. Two measures have been adopted
so far. The first is the institution, through Diocesan Boards
of Finance, of general appeals to the laity for funds to aug-
ment poor livings. These can be accepted and supported by
the laity only on the understanding that the Church is pro-
ceeding, as speedily as possible, to more fundamental re-
forms. It is obviously a misuse of the man-power of the
Church to retain a large number of men in part-time offices;
to pay them full-time stipends for part-time work can be
justified only on the principle that while the grass is growing
the horse may be starving.
The second is embodied in the Union of Benefices Measure
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 195
and in exercising the opportunities which exist, in certain
circumstances, for holding livings in plurality. Considerable
use has been made of these facilities, more, probably, than
many people realize. In the Survey area, for example, there
are fifteen parishes, but only four of them are complete in
themselves for Church purposes. Each of the remaining
eleven is linked to one or more of the others or to a parish
outside the area, there being eleven incumbents, in all, for
nineteen churches. The following table shows the position,
the figures being based on those given in the Diocesan
Calendar:
Single and United Benefices in the Survey Area
Parish
Total population
Net income
Single benefices
3
1,300
360
5
8 and 9*
200
280
240
280
10
230
250
Benefices united or held in plurality
i, i' and 2
4 6
7, i5 16
750
^70
440
330
330
600
ii 14
12 13
1,420
460
470
260
17 20
18 21
1,240
1,440
340
350
*Nos. 8 and 9 are two parts of one parish.
This position is by no means exceptional. While it has
been impossible, of course, to make a comparison with many
other rural areas, an inspection of the Diocesan Calendar
suggests that in country districts the tendency towards amal-
gamation has gone a long way, and it is still proceeding. In
suburban deaneries the position is different, for the growth
of populations in country parishes round the big towns gives
full-time employment, and often more than that, to the
parochial clergy.
A cursory examination of the table above suggests, at once,
196 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
that, notwithstanding the amalgamations, the man-power of
the Church in this area is still being wasted, whilst, with one
possible exception, none of the clergy can be regarded as
having a reasonable living. Only two of the joint benefices
are worth more than 350 a year, and in only three of them
does the population reach four figures.
But these are not the only reflections suggested by an
analysis of the position of the Established Church in the
Survey area. It is argued not infrequently that many of
these little country livings, affording part-time employment
in return for part-time salaries, are eminently suitable for
elderly clergy, who have given their best years in the service
of the Church in busy places or in the Mission field, and
who, while still able to do useful work, have earned the right
to take life more easily. The cure of souls in a little country
place, it is argued, is their opportunity, for it gives them full
scope for the exercise of their lifelong experience of men and
affairs, adjusted, at the same time, to that which can fairly be
expected of men of their years. But what are the facts dis-
closed in the Survey area ?
More than half the clergy came to these little villages when
they were first beneficed, and they have remained in them
ever since two of them for twenty years. Five of them were
less than 40 years old when they came to theii; parishes, and
the average age of all the incumbents in the area, on institu-
tion to their benefices, was 41 years. There are no reasons for
supposing that this district is in any way exceptional. On the
contrary, it is likely to be fairly typical of any part of rural
England.
The Union of Benefices, or the holding of livings in plura-
lity, then, offers no general solution of the problem of the
proper use of the man-power and endowments of the Church.
Moreover, they are always unpopular in country districts. In
urban areas, in which few people have any idea where one
parish begins and another ends, the union of two or more
benefices may result in giving the one incumbent an enlarged
sphere of work at a fair remuneration, without detriment to
the interests of the parishes involved. In the country, the
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 197
joining of two parishes may sometimes give the same oppor-
tunities and advantages to the incumbent, but it means,
almost inevitably, the association of two entirely dissociated
communities, and, as the people see it, depriving one parish
of its priest. Where there is much inequality in the relative
sizes of the two, there is little doubt that this is virtually
what happens to the smaller one. Certainly the strongest
opposition to the application of the Union of Benefices
measure, or to livings in plurality, comes from the laity.
People who never enter the church will attend the public
inquiry of the Bishop 's Commission set up to advise upon
a proposed union of two parishes, to protest against it. It is
on these occasions that the place of the parish priest as a
leader in the secular affairs of the parish is brought home,
and the opportunities of his position outside the Church are
realized.
It is impossible not to feel that these methods of increasing
the efficiency of the Church's man-power are merely pallia-
tives, and that the time has passed, if indeed it ever were,
when such attempts to reform both the spiritual and
temporal affairs of the rural parish could be regarded as
adequate. In civil administration, the changes in modern life
led long ago to the abandonment of the parish as the unit of
organization for most purposes, in favour of larger and more
comprehensive units, in which wider views of local needs
could be taken and the resources for meeting them could be
pooled. In professional life the tendency of to-day is more
and more to get away from the individual, all-round man,
whether in medicine, for example, or in law, and to find in-
stead the group of specialists, pooling their knowledge and
their fees. Is it not time that the attempt should be made to
substitute a larger unit of Church organization in the place of
the parish ? The suggestion is offered that this unit might be
found in the Rural Deanery.
The central idea would be to provide a staff of clergy for
the deanery, its number being dependent on the numbers and
distribution of the population and the ease of communication.
The most important town or village in the deanery would be
1 98 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
the focus, the incumbent of its church would be the Rural
Dean, the co-ordinator of all spiritual and pastoral work
within the deanery. The reorganization would then proceed
to the division of the deanery into a few districts, by grouping
the parishes as convenience suggested. The central parish of
each would be the nucleus, and its incumbent would be
responsible for the work of the Church within the district,
assisted by the requisite staff of assistant clergy, placed about
it in the most convenient centres. Thus, the clergy staff of
each deanery would consist of the Rural Dean, the District
Incumbents, and the Assistant Clergy. The motor-car, the
motor bicycle, and the country motor bus services have
revolutionized transport and have virtually removed the
difficulty of going from village to village, both for the parson
and the people.
As to emoluments, the idea would be to pool all the endow-
ments of the deanery, and to add to this sum any income
derived from the sale of redundant parsonages and the in-
vestment of the proceeds. From this pool all the clergy would
be paid according to a graded scale, with increments within
the grades, thus removing an indefensible difference between
the conditions of employment in clerical and in lay services.
From attempts that have been made to work out what would
be the effect of such a reconstruction, it is evident that some
deaneries could be adequately staffed and the clergy properly
remunerated, while leaving a surplus income. Others, again,
could not. The operation of the scheme should provide,
therefore, for the payment of all surpluses into a central fund,
diocesan, provincial, or even national, upon which the ' de-
ficiency' deaneries would draw. Should this fund be insuffi-
cient to meet the calls upon it, the Church would have then,
and then only, an unanswerable case for an appeal to church-
men for fresh endowments. 1
The advantages of such a reorganization, both to the clergy
1 For a full consideration of this subject, with examples of the effects of
proposals for such reorganization, see Men, Money and the Ministry, a Plea
for Economic Reform in the Church of England (Longmans, 1937), and the
sequel to it, Putting our House in Order (Longmans, 1941).
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 199
and to the laity, should be very great. With a team of clergy,
fully employed, properly paid, moving about within a group
of villages, the terrible loneliness of so many of the country
parsons, cut off by economic disability and by the narrow
confines of their small parishes from nearly all intellectual
and social life, would be eliminated. The strain of preaching
twice every Sunday to the same small group of people would
be relieved, and the problem of what to do with the square
peg in the round hole, one which has defied, hitherto, all
attempts by the Church Assembly to find a solution, would
rarely arise. The flexibility of the scheme and the mobility of
the clergy should provide every necessary opportunity for
finding openings, either in the services of the Church, or
in pastoral, social, or educational work, suited to the capacities
of every member of the clerical partnership.
An organization as active as this should provide opportuni-
ties, hitherto entirely lacking, for the training of deacons and
young priests in rural church work. At present it would seem
that nearly every country parish priest has received all his
early training and experience as a curate in an urban com-
munity. As a result, it is uncommon to find a country parson
who has any real knowledge of the peculiar needs of a rural
community, or any particular affinities with the countryman
and his way of life. If, at an earlier stage in his training, the
Theological Colleges would give some instruction in such
subjects, the young priest would be better equipped for his
future vocation, while at the same time the Rural Deanery
would provide all the scope needed as a training ground in
which the deacon could begin his ministry.
Some of the advantages which reorganization on the larger
basis should bring to the clergy would accrue, also, to the
laity. With a team of clergy, the occasional incompatibility of
parish and priest could be avoided, and the much more
frequent case where the parson's influence is purely negative
could also be met. Clergy and laity alike would be stimulated
by the variety which would be made possible through the
interchange of pulpits between members of the team.
However, the break-up of the parochial system and a
200 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
reorganization on some wider basis, designed to make better
use of the man-power and the money of the Church, could
not be accomplished without some sacrifices on the part of
the laity. Not every parish could continue to have its resident
Miles
Places of Worship.
Villages joined by arrows have United Benefices or Livings in Plurality.
parson, but, as has been shown above, the union of benefices
and the holding of livings in plurality have already had this
result in a number of places, without any of the compensating
advantages which reorganization on bolder lines would bring.
There would be reductions, also, in the number of services
which could be provided, but this again would be no new
experience in many places, and the adoption of a larger unit
of organization would reduce the handicap by sharing it over
a larger number of churches. Whatever the reduction in the
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 201
numbers of the clergy which reorganization involved, it
should be possible to provide one service, at least, in every
church in the area each Sunday.
However, it would be undesirable to accept any reduction.
in the number of Sunday and even of week-day observances
to which the people have been accustomed, without consider-
ing whether these services could not be provided by other
means. This raises the whole question of the organization of
laymen suitable for help in parochial work of all kinds, and
even of the ordination of Voluntary clergy' Church laymen
suitable for ordination and willing to accept it. 1 These, how-
ever, are large questions of Church policy, and it would be
improper to pursue them here. The main purpose of this
chapter is to call attention to the fact, exemplified by investiga-
tion in the Survey area, that the parochial system has broken
down, both as an organization and as an influence, and that
large measures of reform seem to be needed if the Church is
to be an effective force in rural social life.
THE FREE CHURCHES
In most of the parishes in the Survey area the Free
Churches are represented. Three villages only have no place
of worship other than the parish church. Four others have
each a chapel, either Methodist or Baptist, there is one which
has a Friends' Meeting House and a Methodist Chapel, while
each of the three larger villages has a Roman Catholic Church
and two or three chapels. While the Free Churches thus are
well represented in the area, the outstanding difference
between their organization and that of the Established
Church is their lack of resident clergy; for they have only
two in the whole area.
Perhaps the most encouraging fact that emerges from this
survey of religious organizations is that the bitterness and
intolerance between church and chapel, so prevalent in the
last century, has entirely died out. No longer does a landlord
inquire into the religious convictions of prospective tenants,
1 See the Rev. Rowland R. Allen, The Case for Voluntary Clergy (Eyre
and Spottiswood), 1930.
202 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
nor the vicar refuse to employ a nonconformist gardener.
Church and chapel mix freely, and respect one another's
opinions. It is the more regrettable to think of the divisions
which separate Christians in their acts of worship, differences
which are brought home with particular force in villages of
two or three hundred inhabitants, where small handfuls of
people may be seen on Sunday mornings straggling into
each of two or even three places of worship.
The absence of a resident minister places the chapel at a
disadvantage. Whereas a competent conscientious parish
priest can make his church the centre of village social life,
this is not possible for the chapel. Normally, nothing is
arranged by the chapel apart from the Sunday services, no
week-day activities or social events. The congregation needs
a pastor to whom its members can turn in time of perplexity,
and village chapel congregations are very much sheep without
a shepherd. However, this is no argument for the multiplica-
tion of parochial clergy, and the remedy for the defects of the
present system must be sought in a new conception of the
spiritual, and of the pastoral, organization alike of the work of
the Free Churches and of the Established Church.
At present most chapels have a secretary, whose office it is
to welcome the preacher usually a layman from a nearby
town, and a different one each week to arrange hospitality
for him, to see to the care of the chapel, and so forth.
It was said sometimes that the presence of both church
and chapel in a village acted as a stimulus. Certainly the
presence of a chapel does not necessarily mean division in the
community, any more than the existence of only one church
always makes for solidarity. The overriding factor in the
small village is unquestionably the man. With the right man
as parish priest, church and chapel were found to exist
happily side by side, and their congregations co-operated
readily in village social activities. The remark was made
more than once that there was more dissension between
members of the same congregation than between those of
different denominations, and the incumbent of the church in
one of the larger villages thought some competition in church
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 203
life was good. Nowadays 'united services' between the
various denominations for special occasions, held generally in
the parish church, are becoming fairly common.
THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Special reference must be made to the Society of Friends,
who exercise undoubtedly the strongest social influence in
their part of the Survey area. The Friends take a great
interest in village life, and are always seeking to promote its
welfare. They are responsible for a very successful Workers'
Educational Association group, and they have helped to make
the people politically conscious in the best sense, by making
the Parish Meetings real centres of parochial activity. It was
due, largely, to their exertions that their village is one of the
few in the Survey area to have a water-supply. As else-
where, however, the Quakers for the most part are members
of the middle classes. The poorer members of the community
who attend places of worship go either to the parish church
or to the Methodist Chapel. The Society is not increasing in
the Survey area, and three of its four meeting-houses are
closed.
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
There are three Roman Catholic congregations in the
Survey area, one in each of the larger villages. For the most
part their members are not natives of the villages, but are
fairly recent comers, many of them Irish, and most of them
members of the working class. They keep very much to
themselves, and do not join in any of the 'united' services
organized by the other religious bodies on special occasions.
CHAPTER XI
ENDOWED CHARITIES
CHARITIES IN THE SURVEY AREA ; THE FUTURE OF PAROCHIAL CHARITIES.
THERE can be hardly a parish in the country which is not
endowed with one or more charitable trusts. Most of them
appear to fall into one of two quite definite categories. First,
there are those which were founded by benevolent people,
who seem to have been inspired by the unrelieved poverty
of many of their neighbours, in the three centuries following
the dissolution of the monasteries, to endow various forms of
assistance for them. The passing of the Poor Law Amend-
ment Act, 1832, the Act which set up the Boards of Guardians
and the Union workhouses, seems to have put an end to this
form of private charity. Second, there are those, invariably
charities for the distribution of coal, which were created by
the Awards under many of the Inclosure Acts, by which the
poor were deprived of the right to cut furze or turf on the
commons and wastes which those Acts inclosed for cultiva-
tion. These, strictly, are not charities at all, but ancient
rights transmuted, and no more have been formed since the
inclosure of the country was completed.
Charities in either category are administered, to-day, by
local trustees responsible to the Charity Commissioners, to
whom they are expected to make annual returns of their
income and expenditure.
The old endowed charities in the first category had many
specific purposes, both the benefactions and the beneficiaries
being sometimes defined in great detail. The largest group
were for the relief of the poor of the parish, including the
sick and the disabled weekly money payments, or lump
sums at Christmas or at other seasons, payments in kind,
bread or clothing, and pensions or almshouses for the aged.
Such bequests to help the poor in one way or another are the
more general, but there are particular endowments also in
considerable variety, such as those for the establishment and
ENDOWED CHARITIES 205
maintenance of schools, for the apprenticeship of the young, for
the upkeep of church and churchyard, for sermons on par-
ticular occasions, for the repair of specific highways or bridges,
for the general purposes of the parish, and for other matters.
CHARITIES IN THE SURVEY AREA
The oldest charity in the Survey area is that endowed by a
nobleman beheaded in 1554, a small sum, measured by to-
day's values, for the relief of the poor. In all, there are ten
parishes in the area in which there are money payments to
the poor. Gifts of bread are made in three parishes, and sums
have been bequeathed to provide money for apprenticing boys
to trades in two others. The group of miscellaneous charities
includes provision for church expenses, payments to schools
and hospitals, the repair of a bridge leading to the parish
church, 'town charges', and 'pious purposes'.
Most endowments are comparatively small, producing a
few pounds annually. Here and there, however, considerable
incomes have to be administered, arising sometimes from
appreciation in the value of an original bequest of land. One
of the charities in the Survey area has an income of some 200
a year, and there are two or three others of more than 100.
It is the general practice of the Charity Commissioners
not to intervene to alter the purpose of an old endowed
charity, nor to interfere with its administration by the
trustees. Where, however, the original purposes of the trust
can no longer be carried out, or if the income applicable has
risen out of all proportion to the need, the Commissioners may
require of the trustees the submission of a scheme to vary the
purposes of the trust, so as to bring it more into consonance
with the times. This course has been adopted with one or
two of the larger endowments in the Survey area, though one
of them, a charity producing an income of nearly 200
annually, is still administered under an award of the Court
of Chancery made at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The small parochial charities and the administration of
them, to-day, are, too many of them, in a most unsatisfactory
state. With some it seems impossible, and with others
206 ENDOWED CHARITIES
undesirable, under modern conditions, to administer them
exactly in accordance with the wishes of their founders. It
is obvious, for example, that nobody to-day needs help in
the form of loaves of bread, and yet in one village of the Survey
area ten loaves are still placed in the church every Saturday
for the needy, and often they are not taken away. Even when
the purpose of the benefaction' seems clear and straight-
forward enough, there may be abuses, and this happens
particularly over the distribution of coal amongst the poor.
In some villages there are no real poor 'so I just give the
order to the coal merchant and have it delivered to practically
all the houses. It saves a lot of trouble to give everybody
some.' In another village, 'everybody except property owners
gets some coal from the charity they get about 3 cwt. each'.
In a third, the parson, who with two others administers the
charities, said: 'Under present social conditions it is so
difficult to find out just who are the real poor, that in prac-
tice we give every villager 2 cwt. of coal. The Charity
Commissioners', he added, 'ought to step in and take over
these small charities and administer the money for useful
purposes in keeping with present conditions. They are
nothing more than white elephants and a source of much
bickering.'
On the other hand, there are places in which real attempts
are made to carry out the intentions of the benefactor. In one,
the trustees interpret 'the poor' as being widows and old-age
pensioners, and with this qualification the coal charity
suffices to give each of them about half a ton. In another, the
interpretation at the moment is old-age pensioners and the
wives of soldiers on active service. In still another, a list of
the more necessitous inhabitants is kept and revised from
time to time.
Quite apart from the possibility of carrying out the original
purposes of the various charities, is the whole question of
the administrative system. There is often too much mystery
about the management of small endowed charities. Nobody
seems to know with any precision what they amount to or how
the funds are applied. In one village of the Survey area,
ENDOWED CHARITIES 207
trustees have died and new ones have not been appointed,
which has left the charities in the hands of one man, and
things will be in a dreadful muddle when anything happens
to him'. Nor can the Charity Commissioners be acquitted of
responsibility for the casualness of so much administration,
for they seem to give too much latitude in the time allowed
for submitting accounts. Unless or until some drastic reform
be introduced, such as the amalgamation of village charities
by districts on some plan resembling that which is suggested
later, it might be well if the trustees of all parochial charities
were required, by law and under penalty, to produce their
accounts and to render an account of their stewardship at the
annual Parish Meeting.
Many of the larger charities are administered under modern
revised schemes. A few good examples of properly prepared
schemes are provided in the Survey area. One such was
drawn up by the Charity Commissioners in 1871, varied in
1885, and a further scheme adopted in 1897, for regulating
the Town-lands charity, which consists of a number of
cottages and investments of about j 10,000. The annual
income is now administered under five branches:
1. Church branch, to which is allocated 5/25ths of the
income.
2. Educational branch, 5/25ths.
3. Medical branch, 6/25ths.
4. Provident branch, 6/25ths.
5. Eleemosynary branch, 3/25ths.
This is a useful scheme, capable of providing assistance
where it is most needed under modern conditions, and easily
adaptable to changing circumstances. Thus, the educational
branch can defray the cost of the outfits of 'poor and meri-
torious scholars' upon their entering a trade or occupation,
and it provides them with the appropriate technical training.
The medical branch provides, among other things, for the
services of a qualified medical practitioner for the poor.
The eleemosynary branch issues clothes, fuel, food in cases
of distress, and relief in money in particularly needy cases.
The charity is administered by eleven trustees the vicar of
ao8 ENDOWED CHARITIES
the place, five persons elected by the Parish Council, and two
by the Parish Meeting of an adjacent hamlet, together with
three co-opted trustees.
Another charity, organized under a scheme, administers
almshouses for four people and income from the Town-lands.
The inmates of the almshouses are given 45. a week each, and,
after paying administration and other expenses, the residue is
divided equally between the school and the purchase of coal
for the poor; in most years there is about 25 for each pur-
pose. A list of the poor is kept, and an endeavour made to see
that the coal should go where it is most needed. The accounts
of this charity are carefully kept and audited, and they are
presented annually at the Parish Meeting a procedure
which, if followed in every village, would do much to lift the
administration of the charities out of the obscurity in which
many of them lie at present.
Less satisfactory is the position of an extensive charity in
another of the larger villages, consisting mainly of an estate
of about 150 acres, which produces an income of some 200
annually. The money is divided equally between the poor,
the church and the bridge leading thereto, and town purposes.
In recent years the greater part of the income has not been
used. For example, on an average, about 25 is spent
annually on the poor, some 90 old-age pensioners, widows,
and other needy people getting 55. each at Christmas. In
addition 5 a year is reserved from the 'poor' money for the
purpose of apprenticing boys in the village. The balance in
the 'poor* section is mounting up, and recently 100 of it was
invested during the 'Wings for Victory' week. There seems
to be little use for the income apportioned for 'town purposes',
now that things such as foot-paths and street lighting are the
business of local authority, and there is something like 200
lying idle in this section. There is more justification for
allowing the income allocated to (Church purposes to ac-
cumulate, as heavy expenditure on repairs, etc. may be called
for at any time. No annual report of this charity is issued,
but there is a clerk who keeps the accounts.
Here is a case in which charitable funds cannot be fully
ENDOWED CHARITIES 209
used, merely because conditions in the place to-day have
changed. It seems that an attempt could usefully be made to
devise a scheme, for example, to apply any residue from the
'poor' money in other ways, more in keeping with present-day
conditions, to assist those in need. Provision might be made,
too, for transferring the 'town purposes' portion to either of
the other two sections, or for rinding other useful employ-
ment for it.
In still another place, a small one, there is a large charity
about which little information was forthcoming. By its terms
one-third of its income is to be given to the 'poor', one-third
to the school, and one-third for 'pious purposes'. Nobody
in the village seemed to know much about it, and questions
asked at the Annual Parish Meeting elicited little. An applica-
tion to the Charity Commissioners produced a copy of the
accounts for the previous year, showing a sum received and
brought forward of more than 200, out of which the 'poor'
received 17. IQS. in the form of coal given to 38 persons, the
school got 11, while of the balance about 100 was spent
on repairs to the property of the trust and in administrative
expenses, and ^61 on 'current expenses'. What these were is
not specified, but the net result is that less than 30 of a total
of more than 200 was applied in that year to the purposes
of the Trust. Here, obviously, is a charity crying out for in-
vestigation to facilitate the preparation of a new scheme.
THE FUTURE OF PAROCHIAL CHARITIES
In dealing with the charities in the Survey area, two lines
of action suggest themselves. First, in villages where fairly
extensive charities exist, the Charity Commissioners should ask
for the preparation of schemes to bring their usefulness up to
date, and to introduce a certain amount of flexibility in the
conditions so that they may be more readily adapted to
changing times. Second, in the smaller villages, the multi-
tude of little charities should be grouped together in one
scheme, devised so as to make the best use of the money
available according to present circumstances, and observing
the wishes of the benefactors so far as possible.
210 ENDOWED CHARITIES
Consider, for a moment, how to 'make the best use of the
money according to present circumstances*. People no longer
want doles of bread. There is a case for the distribution of
coal to those really in need, as this seems to be an item which
the Public Assistance authorities are liable to overlook. But
perhaps two of the most effective uses to which charitable
funds could be put would be the provision of better education
for the young, and the provision of houses for poor people in
their old age. An earlier section of this Survey of conditions in
rural areas has shown the lower standard of the provisions
for the proper education of village children by contrast with
those available in the towns. Until the comprehensive
changes contemplated by the new Education Bill are made,
the best that can be hoped is that a small number of the
brighter children should be able to get the benefits of
secondary education in the nearest town. Scholarships are
granted by the education authorities for this purpose, but the
allowances made are often insufficient to cover all the ex-
penses of clothing, books, &c. This is where the charities
could offer valuable help, by making it possible for poor
children to receive secondary education without imposing
intolerable burdens upon their parents.
As to the provision of houses for the aged poor, one of the
main preoccupations of old people is trying to ensure that
they may have 'a roof over their heads*. Money now doled
out in small amounts, or in groceries or coal, to a number of
'poor', a good many of whom are not really poor, might be
used much better in the purchase or erection of cottages to be
earmarked for the old-age pensioners of the village. In an
adjoining county, a college landlord has built a few houses
designed specially for old couples, with two bedrooms,
kitchen-living room and scullery-bathroom, which are let at
is. SL week. They release larger houses for occupation by
working men and their families, and there are always old
couples waiting for them. Provision would thus be made for
husband and wife to live together. Too often almshouses are
for 'aged men' or for 'aged women', so that married couples
cannot spend the last few years of this life together in them,
ENDOWED CHARITIES 211
and often they prefer to go on living together, even on the
verge of destitution, rather than live in comparative comfort
and be separated.
It is estimated that approximately 400 is available every
year from the various small charities in eight of the parishes
in the Survey area. Would it not be better to amalgamate
these with similar small charities from the neighbouring
villages for the preparation of a scheme for assisting the young
and housing the old? The 'poor' need not go without their
extra bit of coal at Christmas, and a small sum, say 10,
might be allocated to each village for this purpose. The area
in which small charities might be grouped would need con-
sideration. The Rural District Council area might be a useful
administrative unit, large enough to bring in a substantial
sum, yet not too large to lose sight of local needs. A grouping
scheme would remove the fortuitous advantages now enjoyed
by some villages over their neighbours. It is told of a parish
a little outside the Survey area, where there is an exceptionally
large charitable trust for the benefit of the aged, that there is
special competition for houses in the village amongst people
nearing the end of their active lives. The details of admini-
stration would need to be carefully worked out. Possibly a
joint committeee of the education authority and the public
assistance committee might work. Whatever the arrange-
ment, it is clear from the investigation in the Survey area that
some attempt should be made to ensure the better use of the
incomes of the many small, endowed charities, found in many
of the country districts. At present, they constitute a minor
scandal ; the money is too often doled out, or frittered away,
without much obvious benefit to those members of the
community whom pious benefactors intended to serve.
CHAPTER XII
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE SURVEY AREA. THE INERTIA OF THE
VILLAGE. CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITY: Leadership and Organi-
zation ; Types of Social Activity ; Conditions in the Survey Area.
ORGANIZATIONS FOR ENTERTAINMENT : Dances ; Whist Drives ; Socials ;
Cricket and Football Clubs ; Other Sports Clubs ; Men's Clubs. OR-
GANIZATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT AND BENEFIT : Women's Institutes ;
The Mothers' Union ; Slate and Thrift Clubs ; Friendly Societies ;
Trade Organizations; Village Produce Associations. THE PUBLIC
HOUSE. VILLAGE HALLS. SOCIAL CENTRES.
THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE SURVEY AREA
THERE are certain basic characteristics common to all the
villages of the Survey area, both the three larger ones and
the several smaller ones.
1. They are all primarily agricultural in character.
2. They all, except one, look to the same market town.
3. The populations consist mostly of small, independent
farmers and independent people with small businesses.
Very little agricultural labour is employed. With
possibly one exception, there are no villages in which
a squire or a local landowner plays a dominating role.
Everywhere in the area villagers have a strong feeling
and tradition of independence.
This common background means that certain major
contrasts will not arise the contrasts, for example, between
the suburban village, the village dependent on a particular
industry, the agricultural village run by the squire, and the
one with no such obvious leader. It follows, therefore, that
the main question to be answered is: Given this group of
villages, all economically and socially similar, what accounts
for the great differences in the degrees of social activity
which they manifest ?
Socially, each village gives the impression of being a self-
contained unit. The people have a deep sense of belonging
to their own village, and a disinclination for any kind of
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 213
co-operation with others. This feeling is intensified when
the neighbour is a bigger village, owing to the fear of
absorption for all sorts of social and administrative purposes,
and in the Survey area it was carried a stage farther, for one
of the larger villages lives in the fear of becoming a suburb,
merely, of the nearby market town.
This attitude is not surprising, perhaps, in view of the
long tradition of village autonomy and self-government
which persisted almost up to the end of last century, but
there is evidence that this parochialism is breaking down in
the face of modern conditions of life. The older people,
probably, will retain their prejudices, but the younger
members of the village are realizing what easy transport,
the bike and the bus particularly, can do to open up life for
them. Dances, socials, and fetes in the larger villages,
cinemas in the market towns, are brought within easy reach,
and their attractions are being realized. The war seems to
be operating in both directions. The difficulty of getting
about keeps people at home and throws them back on their
own resources. Village patriotism is deliberately exploited
for Warship* and * Wings for Victory' weeks, by fostering
rivalry. On the other hand, a group of villages in the Survey
area united to stage a very successful Red Cross Garden
Produce Show.
It will be of interest to note the effect of the increasing
demand made upon the villages of the Survey area for labour
for the large factory outside one of the market towns, to
which men and women go daily by works buses, train, and
bicycle. The factory was equipped about eight years before
the war, but only recently have the villagers been attracted
to it in any numbers. The three-shift system is worked, and
this must affect the organization of social activities in the
villages ; but apart from this there is no evidence that factory
workers and others do not mix as freely as before.
THE INERTIA OF THE VILLAGE
Every village may be said to consist of a majority of
socially inactive and more or less apathetic people, with a
214 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
small, active group. The inactive ones can roughly be
divided into two classes : those who are not willing to accept
responsibility, but willing to join organizations if they exist
and to give some help in their activities, and those who are
not willing to join any organization. As a result of this
division, the different organizations in the village have more
or less identical members; ther are those who belong to a
number of organizations, and those who belong to none. As
one of the local clergy put it, 'It is like a stage army, now
dressed as the Mothers' Union and now as the Women's
Social Club.' To a large extent this is natural enough. Most
people are extremely busy doing their work, looking after
their families, tied to their homes and so forth, and strong
reasons are wanted to make them undertake extra work or
sacrifice some of their spare time. People, too, are naturally
reluctant to *push themselves forward', being afraid, often
with justification, of what their neighbours may say about
them.
Another limiting factor on social activity, it must be
admitted, is the obstructive effect of quarrels. Quarrels are
started in village life by all sorts of causes, and sometimes
from nothing that is discernible. 'Quarrels more than
anything else prevent the membership of our various social
organizations from increasing', said one of the clergy. 'If
this twenty were induced to join, that twenty would walk
out.' Quarrels are not confined to any one class or age, and
it must be remembered that although they are handicaps to
the formation and the success of parochial organizations,
they are themselves a form of social activity. They are a
constant source of amusement, excitement, drama, conversa-
tion, and of group formation in the village; life would be
much duller without them. Whether the many organizations,
both voluntary and compulsory, which the war has brought
into being for mutual protection and national defence,
organizations which take no account of social distinctions
nor of personal antipathies, will have any permanent
effect upon village cliques and family feuds, remains to be
seen.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 215
CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITY
Three conditions are needed for social activity in village
life. There must be leadership to stimulate the inactive into
activity. There must be needs to be satisfied. There must
be facilities for the activity for example, a village hall or
other centre.
Leadership and Organization in the villages may be supplied
by the parson and his wife, the schoolmaster, where there is
one, residents with leisure and means, and by villagers ready
to take a leading part amongst their neighbours. Farmers,
as a rule, are not prominent in the social activities of the
villages.
In most places, it is the people of leisure and the school-
master who take the lead in originating and organizing, and
it is a tradition that they are the people who should that is,
villagers expect and wait for a lead from them. Where this
tradition is strong, as it is in the Survey area, especially in
the smaller villages, the absence of one of these, able and
willing to give a lead, may be the reason for the lack of social
activities. As a woman in one small village said: 'We have
got no gentry there is no one to help us', and in some of the
other villages the explanation for the absence of the com-
moner social institutions was lack of leadership from 'high
up*.
The parson, the schoolmaster, and the leisured class
play their own parts in the social activity of the village. The
social province of the parson and his wife is, first, the Church
societies, such as the Mothers' Union, and second, societies
for boys and girls. None of the clergy in the Survey area
took the leading part in any social organizations or activities
outside these provinces, except one who used to organize
socials, dances, and whist drives before the war.
The schoolmaster is usually the key man in the social
activities of the village, as is amply demonstrated by the
Survey. In one of the larger villages, he is Chairman of the
Parish Council ; Churchwarden ; Trustee of the Ex-Service
Men's Hall (which fulfils the function of the Village Hall) ;
Secretary of the Tennis, Football, and Cricket Clubs;
2i 6 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
Treasurer of the Workpeople's Hospital Association;
Billeting Officer; Invasion Officer; Rest Centre Organizer,
and Secretary of the Savings Association. In another place,
a schoolmaster has been responsible for a number of
organizations, particularly the W.E.A. lectures. These are
attended by about sixty people, drawn from all classes of the
village. In a third place, the schoolmaster, more than any
other person, is the organizer of the social activity of the
village. He described how he goes round 'bullying' people
to do things when he is organizing some special event in the
village. He seemed to have brought new social life to a place
which had very little social activity. In still another place, the
schoolmaster was described as 'the key man of the village',
being secretary of the Village Hall, of the British Legion, and
of the Cricket and Football Clubs, besides being the organizer
of athletic festivals, dances, whist drives, and socials.
The want of a schoolmaster living in the village was given
as one of the chief reasons for the lack of social activity in no
fewer than five of the villages of the Survey area. The school-
master has an extremely important effect on the social life
of the village through the social education which he gives in
school to the children he teaches, and his daily contacts with
them and their parents outside. While the recent reforms
in the system of education, which have taken children at the
age of 1 1 away from the village elementary school, and have
substituted the schoolmistress for the schoolmaster, may
be good for education, the consequences on village social
life, in many places, can only be described as deplorable.
The multitudinous subsidiary opportunities of the school-
master's office cannot be taken by a woman. Moreover, he
is usually a married man, who can settle down happily in a
village with his wife and family as members of the com-
munity. 1 For the schoolmistress, on the other hand, life
alone in a village lodging has little to offer, and the practice
of living elsewhere and going backwards and forwards to her
work, examples of which are to be found in the Survey area,
is extending.
1 This matter has been discussed already; see pp. 164-6.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 217
The extent to which responsibility for organizations and
activities is in the hands of people of means and leisure
depends upon how far they are the only people available, the
strength of the tradition of dependence or independence in
the village, and upon whether the 'upper classes' have the
qualifications for leadership. These are that they should be
'real gentry', keen on social activities and knowing what kind
of things are needed by the villagers, good mixers, and,
lastly, that they should be able and willing to give a good deal
of their time to the village. If there be persons with all these
qualifications, they are certain to be playing leading parts in
social activities.
Types of Social Activity. Organizations and activities
can be divided into two classes those run to provide
entertainment, and those run for serious purposes, mutual
improvement, and material advantage. Where the end is
serious, the organization is likely to be led by people of leisure
in the village. Thus, such things as fetes for charity, bazaars,
cooking-classes, sewing parties, and the Women's Institute
are nearly always connected with this class. Another
characteristic of things run by them is that they are concerned
with the world outside the village. If, for example, some-
thing is organized to help a national charity, or if a lecturer
is to be brought in from outside to speak on some general
subject, as at a meeting of the Women's Institute, then the
squire, the parson, the doctor, or some member of the upper
classes or his wife is almost certain to be responsible.
This applies generally to the Women's Institutes, partly for
the reasons mentioned above and partly because of the
middle-class character of these bodies, upon which a number
of people in different villages commented.
Things run with amusement as their end are often run
without help from the upper class of village society things
such as dances, socials, whist drives, and sports clubs. This
is partly because participation in them is confined usually
to the villagers themselves and their friends from the locality,
and partly because they are run purely for entertainment.
When, as may happen, they are run with some serious end
218 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
in view a dance to collect money for a national charity ; a
concert to educate people musically rather than to entertain
them; dramatics run as * drama* rather than as amusement
the more likely are they to be organized from above. In fact,
it might be said as a generalization, that in the Survey area
it was found that social activities villager-run were always
for amusement, but when they were 'gentry-run' there was
always some kind of serious purpose involved.
Where the object of the organization is to secure the
material advantage of its members, for example, Slate Clubs,
Friendly Societies, and Contributory Schemes, it is usually
run by villagers. The one exception is the Nursing Associa-
tion, which is run or dominated, nearly always, by someone
of good social position.
Conditions in the Survey Area. The smaller villages are
very badly off for social activities and organizations. In some
of them there are no persons of leisure, no schoolmaster,
no resident parson, nor have they any public meeting-
place such as a Village Hall. Except for very occasional
whist drives and dances, held perhaps in the school, these
villages are without social activity of any kind. In one village,
a girls' sewing club, a Mothers' Union, occasional fetes,
children's parties, &c., are run by a lady who came to live
there some years ago, and the villagers themselves run dances,
whist drives, and socials. In the rest of the smaller places,
special events are sometimes got up by private residents, but
there are no organizations. In all of them the reason given
for this lack was the absence of any lead, or of the right kind
of lead, from the people who might be expected to give it.
A number of the villagers told how much they felt the want
of a lead. There had been organizations in the past, but these
died out when the people who originated and ran them went
away.
It is possible, of course, for well-to-do and well-disposed
people to do too much. Either they set too high standards,
or they pauperize their villages and destroy all sense of
initiative and personal responsibility in the people them-
selves. An extreme example was found, a village on which a
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 219
rich man spent large sums of money. He started a Cricket
Club for which he provided equipment, pavilion, clothes for
the players, &c. He ran a flower-show at which he would
offer large sums in prizes, and for which he would provide a
famous military band. Everybody felt that all responsibility
was his, he failed entirely to persuade people to take a share
in the organization of these things with him, and when he
died they languished, first, and then ceased to exist.
In the larger villages the situation is more complicated.
There is a strong tradition of independence. The active work
in nearly all the organizations is done by the villagers, and by
the same half-dozen or so, but even when they do all the
work, they like to have an official head who is in some leading
position.
ORGANIZATIONS FOR ENTERTAINMENT
Most activities of this type are run by villagers for villagers.
Dances. In every village in which there is a suitable room,
frequent dances take place, often about once a week. Every-
where dances have become more popular since the war.
They are thought of as a natural part of village life, not as
special events, and although they are run generally for some
special purpose, such as the Red Cross, the Hospital, and so
on, this acts merely as an excuse for the dance. Generally,
it is the same three or four villagers who get up the dance,
whatever the purpose of it may be or whoever may nominally
be connected with it.
Whist Drives. These have always been popular. They, also,
are got up by villagers, and exist because of the strong
demand there is for them. They, too, are often connected
with special charitable or patriotic purposes. Whist drives
are more popular among the older people; they constitute
their chief organized social activity just as dances do that of
the younger people. They are held either in the Village Hall
or in private rooms.
Socials. Socials are got up, most commonly, entirely by
villagers for villagers, being neither organized nor patronized
by the upper strata of local society. At these socials games
220 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
are played, people sing, dance, perform music and sketches,
&c. They are held in every village where there is a hall. Their
purpose is to give everyone as much amusement as possible.
At the social any special talent which there may be in the
village is disclosed. For instance, in three villages in the
Survey area there are bands, run by and composed of
villagers and used at dances and socials. Village bands
depend on someone with special talents who will teach others
how to play. One of those in the area is run by the village
cobbler. It is used at dances and socials in the village, and
goes to neighbouring villages to play for their dances. The
money raised is given away; recently the cobbler and his
band sent ^i to each service man from three villages
36 altogether.
Similarly, choral and dramatic clubs which perform at
socials exist in many villages, and again some villager with
special talents is needed to organize them. In one place, for
instance, a general shopkeeper has been organizing entertain-
ments, sketches, dances, and music for twenty-eight years.
She picks the artists, and any profits are given to various
charities. She often has to dip deep in her own packet for
expenses. Sketches, dance displays, and musical items are
performed in the Ex-Service Men's Club, about fourteen
persons being concerned in each performance. Rehearsals
take place in her small parlour. She herself is a musician, she
sings, chooses the plays and songs, and teaches the children
the dances. In another of the larger villages there is a Choral
Society, started by a village woman about seventeen years
ago as part of the Women's Institute, though functioning
independently of it. She told how, at first, the women were
shy and had to be 'prodded to sing', and how the husbands
objected because they did not like seeing their wives on the
stage. But gradually more and more women joined, until
there were nearly forty, all busy working-class women. The
plays were nearly always comedies, Villagers like something
to make them laugh'. There was one big performance each
year on New Year's Eve, and two or three smaller ones
during the year.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 221
In one of the smaller villages, too, there are a large number
of people who are interested in theatricals. This interest
seems to date from the time when there was a professional
actor and producer living in the place who produced several
Shakespeare plays.
Cricket and Football Clubs. In the larger villages there is
usually a strong demand for cricket and football; clubs are
not difficult to keep going, and in most villages they have
existed for a long time. In the smaller places, however,
where there are not so many people and it is more difficult
to raise teams, the sports club is less secure and more
dependent on leadership; the Survey area provides several
examples of failure. In one place a cricket club broke up
when a golf club was opened, and nearly all the young men
of the village went every Saturday and Sunday as caddies.
Cricket and football clubs generally play games with other
villages once a week. After the match, the visiting team is
treated to a tea or supper, usually at an inn. The clubs are
nearly always run by villagers, the other classes not being
playing members though often subscribers. In one place,
however, the schoolmaster, the parson, and others play
leading parts.
During the war, cricket and football clubs have ceased to
exist in most places, as a result of calling up for national
service, but it should be easy to start them again.
Other Sports Clubs. All the larger villages of the Survey
area and two of the smaller ones have lawn tennis clubs, some
with their own courts and some using private ones. If there
are public courts in the village, tennis clubs are very easy to
run.
Bowls is played at two places, in one of which are two
clubs, each catering for a different social group.
Two women's sports clubs existed in the area. One of
them, which was started by a former schoolmaster's wife,
used to play stool-ball and net-ball. Later, it was turned
into the Women's Social Club* which gradually ceased to
play outdoor games as the younger members grew fewer,
and it now plays cards and has social gatherings, meeting
22a SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
every fortnight. This club is very popular and entirely
Village* in character. One woman, the most active in the
club and in the village, said: 'It is to give the married women
a night out, which they badly need.' Many things in the
village, such as dances and socials, are run through this club.
At another place, there were two hockey clubs, one mixed,
and one a women's club; the latter was not so exclusive as
the former, and was very popular.
Men's Clubs. These depend for their success not primarily
upon how they are led, but on how far they meet a popular
need ; it is stimulus from below rather than from above which
keeps them going. These clubs, or Reading Rooms as some
of them are called, are used mostly for games billiards,
bagatelle, table-tennis, cards, dominoes, and so on. Not
much reading is done. They are of particular value in the
winter. Management is in the hands of committees elected
at the Annual Meetings. As to buildings, a Reading Room
may have been provided by a benefactor, as in one of the
Survey villages, or the British Legion Club may be thrown
open to all men, as in another, while in a third the Co-
operative Hall is made available. One of them has a bar
for the sale of drinks, cigarettes, &c., which is said to add
very greatly to the success of the club, and it has been
described as 'the best pub in the village'.
The history of men's clubs in the smaller villages of the
Survey area is less satisfactory than in the bigger places.
There is the difficulty not only of sufficient membership to
make sure of cheerful company; there is also the greater
danger of disintegrating dissensions amongst members.
ORGANIZATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT AND BENEFIT
Under this head come schemes for adult education, the
different types of insurance schemes, allotment and produce
societies, and organizations such as the Mothers' Union and
the Women's Institutes, The reason for organizations such
as Friendly Societies, Slate and Thrift Clubs, Hospital
Contributory Schemes, Nursing Associations, is the need
of the people belonging to them to obtain the material
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 223
benefits which they offer. Connected with them is a greater
or lesser amount of administrative work, such as organizing
membership, collecting contributions and subscriptions,
raising special funds, and keeping the accounts. The people
who undertake it do so because they like doing it or because
they feel they ought to do it, not because of anything they
make out of it. It is usually easy to find collectors, for
instance, because some people like the opportunity which
collecting gives of going round chatting from house to
house.
Women's Institutes. Amongst the newer social activities of
the country-side none has made more remarkable headway
than the Women's Institute movement. The Institutes exist
mainly 'to provide for the fuller education of countrywomen
in citizenship, in public questions, both national and inter-
national, in music, drama and other cultural subjects, also to
secure instruction and training in all branches of agriculture,
handicrafts, domestic science, health and social welfare'.
Further, they provide centres for social intercourse and
activities. The position is that whereas each individual
Institute is autonomous, it shares the very material advantages
of federation, which keeps the Institutes in touch with one
another and also secures the distribution of the national
magazine to members; speakers and lecturers for meetings;
the supply on favourable terms of seeds, fruit-trees, &c., and
the right to sell produce at Women's Institute market stalls.
Also, the County Federation organizes county competitions
for garden and home produce, handicrafts, needlework,
music, drama, and other things.
The movement is non-sectarian and non-party ; all country-
women are eligible for membership. The constitution is
entirely democratic, the President and Officers of each In-
stitute being appointed annually at the annual meeting, and
drawn from all classes. In practice, the President is usually
someone of social importance in the village, someone ac-
customed to taking the lead and detached from the little
cliques and cleavages which can spoil so easily the useful-
ness of village organizations.
124 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
While there is a common purpose in all the Women's
Institutes, each one is free to develop along its own special
lines. There are some half-dozen of them in the Survey area ;
one has specialized on produce, having a most successful
annual show and running its own market stall ; another goes
in more for music and drama, . producing its own plays; a
third, and the youngest, runs a Welfare Centre, at which
fuller advantage is taken of the health services now available
for children than is possible in most small villages. In a fourth
place, an Institute doing useful work has been dissolved owing
to differences with the County Executive on questions of
their mutual relationship, and it has reconstituted itself as a
Women's Social Club.
There seems to be no doubt that the Women's Institutes
have done much in the last twenty-five years to bring fresh
interests and a greater realization of citizenship into the lives
of many countrywomen. Within the quarter-century of their
existence they have become a recognized channel for voicing
to the Government the considered opinions of country-
women on questions that concern them. The National
Federation, foe example, was invited by the Committee on
Public Schools to collect evidence of parents' views on the
question of boarding-school education. What their future is
in the post-war world remains to be seen. To-day, there are
war-time organizations which seem, sometimes, to compete
in their activities with the work which has been done for so long
and so successfully by the Women's Institutes. Some of these
may not persist, and if a way of collaboration can be found
with the others, where interests are similar, they should
strengthen rather than weaken the Women's Institute move-
ment. It must be remembered that, as its name implies, it is
exclusively a women's movement, and to that extent it leaves
gaps in the field of social activity for complementary organiza-
tions to fill.
The Mothers' Union. Another organization for women
which is found in the Survey area is the Mothers' Union,
It is a Church of England organization, founded at the end
of last century, broadly for the purpose of promoting and
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 225
maintaining the sanctity of marriage and the responsibili-
ties of parenthood.
The Union is organized on a diocesan basis, with a central
office in London, and a secretary and office in each diocese.
The parish branches are presided over by an Enrolling
Member, who is often, but by no means always, the wife of
the incumbent. While the Mothers' Union is thus an in-
stitution of the Church of England, no religious test is applied,
and it has a number of nonconformist members, and a few
Roman Catholics.
Branches usually meet about once a month, for a short
service, and then a talk or discussion, followed by tea. On
Lady Day there is always a special service. Latterly, member-
ship has fallen off a good deal and it appears that the younger
mothers are not joining. Great efforts are being made to get
hold of young wives through Welfare Centres, &c., and to
form them into groups for instruction and discussion on
Christian marriage and its responsibilities, though not neces-
sarily enrolling them as members.
The union does not compete in any way with the Women's
Institutes. Its aims are definitely moral and spiritual, and the
two organizations should supplement each other's work.
But in some places, particularly the small ones, there may
appear to be competition, because there are so few people to
take the lead and organize anything at all.
There are branches in most of the villages of the Survey
area, with memberships ranging from about twenty to sixty.
Slate Clubs and Thrift Clubs. There are Slate Clubs or
Thrift Clubs run in connexion with almost every village inn in
the area. Members contribute not only for themselves but
also for their families. The people who belong to a particular
club are not necessarily customers at the public house which
runs it; many will be customers at others, or they may be
teetotallers, and will just come in, pay, and then go out again.
Slate Clubs pay out money when a member is ill, generally
up to six weeks' illness. They have a dinner each year at the
inn, after which any balance for the year is distributed
amongst the members. In the Thrift Clubs the member buys
2*6 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
shares. At the end of the year he gets a dividend on the shares,
and as the money is generally invested in the brewery owning
the pub, he gets a good rate of interest. He can borrow from
the club, without security, at 5 per cent, interest. In one of the
larger villages, the Slate and Thrift Clubs ran dances and
whist drives to augment their funds; indeed, it was said that
75 per cent, of all the dances held in the place were run by
these clubs, and that the money obtained in this way made
them very profitable to their members. In no other village
did Slate and Thrift Clubs run dances as a regular thing.
Friendly Societies. Friendly Societies, such as the Ancient
Order of Foresters and the Independent Order of Oddfel-
lows, were once the leading social and benefit bodies in
country districts, but they fill this place no longer in the
Survey area. They function now as insurance societies, and
as nothing more. The history of most of them is long and
honourable. Many a village inn had a 'Club Room', in which
regular meetings of the local Lodge were held for the pay-
ment of contributions and other business, followed by a social
evening. A Club Day was held each year, when there was
a procession with banners and band, a church service, a
business meeting, and a big dinner in the public house.
One society which still functioned, until recently, in a
village of the area as a social body, had refused to amalga-
mate with others when National Health Insurance was
introduced. It had a Club Day until 1936, with a procession,
band, church parade, fete, business meeting, and a dinner.
But it recruits no new members, and the dwindling list of
old ones now numbers only about twenty. Up and down the
country there are still several thousand Lodges which continue
to function as little Approved Societies for the payment of
State and voluntary benefits. But to-day the younger men
are leaving the land in greater and greater numbers, and as
the average age of their members rises, the position of the
societies on the voluntary side becomes actuarially progres-
sively worse, and for most of them there can be no satisfactory
alternative to amalgamation with larger societies, whose
membership is better distributed throughout the age-classes.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 227
Trade Organizations. Associations for mutual protection
are represented by the National Farmers' Union and the
National Union of Agricultural Workers. The former is
organized in County branches, each with an Organizing
Secretary, the counties in their turn being divided into
District branches, with local secretaries drawn usually from
the members. The Farmers 1 Union is an employers' associa-
tion to advance the interests of its members, partly by poli-
tical action, and the County branch is fully representative.
The Agricultural Workers' Union is a revival of Joseph
Arch's organization of farm labourers. It became esta-
blished on a surer foundation after the Agricultural Wages
Board had been set up, in 1917, and the need for a strong
workers' union became apparent if collective bargaining were
to be effective.
Each of these unions has branches in the Survey area.
Village Produce Associations. Before the war there were no
allotment societies or similar organizations in the Survey area,
but since 1939 nearly all its villages have formed associations
of some sort connected with food production. Five of them
have joined the County scheme promoted by the Ministry of
Agriculture and have started Village Produce Associations.
These are comprehensive organizations, concerned not only
with gardening but also with small-livestock keeping, pigs,
poultry, rabbits, &c. Four others are connected with Produce
Associations in neighbour villages. In yet another, the
Friends' scheme for supplying tools and seeds cheaply to
those in need is in operation. Only in one of the larger villages
was it reported that nobody wanted allotments and there were
always some to let.
The rapid popularity of Village Produce Associations is
noteworthy. One has a membership of 150, and another in
the same neighbourhood has more than 100 members. No
doubt one explanation of their vigorous life is the financial
advantage that membership brings. Members get substantial
reductions on their purchases of seeds, seed potatoes, ferti-
lizers, and so on, and if the association organizes a Pig Club
or a Rabbit Club, its members can draw extra rations of
228 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
feeding-stuffs. Some of the associations have organized
Village Market Stalls, which are set up once a week during
the summer months for the sale of members' surplus produce.
Others have working arrangements for the sale of members'
produce through market stalls already organized by the
Women's Institutes. Thus, a small cash income is secured
from produce which might otherwise have been wasted.
These are by no means the only activities of the Village
Produce Associations. Many of them hold regular meetings
for discussions on a variety of topics, and they receive practical
demonstrations in horticulture and livestock keeping from
the County Advisory Staff. Social gatherings such as whist
drives are also held. There is already keen competition
between neighbouring villages, and on one occasion two of
them participated with two others outside the Survey area in
an Inter-village Produce Show in aid of the Red Cross fund.
It seems likely that there may be a permanent place for
these Produce Associations in village life. Just as the Women's
Institute caters for the women, so the Village Produce
Association, although its membership is not restricted to men,
is fulfilling a need for them. It is not dependent upon
leadership from above, and although in some places it has had
help from the squire, the parson, or the schoolmaster, it is
controlled in the main by its working members.
THE PUBLIC HOUSE
It is generally agreed that the pub is the chief centre of
social activity in every village, whatever others there may be.
Here people meet together every night, to drink a little beer,
to gossip, and to play games. It is the working man's club,
satisfying a large part of his desire for company and enter-
tainment; without it there would be a far greater need for
organized social activity.
Every village in the Survey area has at least one fully
licensed house, and one of them has seven. On the other
hand, there is only one grocer's licence and only one licensed
club in the area. None of the houses are 'free' ; all of them
belong to one or other of five breweries, four of them local.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 229
The accompanying map shows the distribution of houses and
their ratios to the local inhabitants. It appears that there are
thirty-six licensed houses in all, an average of one to every
197 persons, including men, women, and children. 1 Five or
"Miles
Licensed Houses and their Proportion to Population.
six of them undertake to supply full entertainment, but light
refreshments only are obtainable at the rest ; hardly more than
one- third of them are open full-time for business.
Obviously, there are far too many houses to give reasonable
livelihoods to their landlords by their trade alone. In the
larger villages it would seem that some of the houses might be
closed with advantage, but this remedy is not available in the
smaller ones, and publicans in this and in similar districts
1 In the larger industrial towns this ratio is commonly about i to 450.
230 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
must have subsidiary occupations. In the Survey area most
of the men go to work at one thing or another. One, for
example, is a builder, another is a carpenter and joiner, a
third is the local carrier, while a fourth is engaged full-time
in agriculture for a local farmer. Some of them occupy land
attached to their houses, but it is not often farmed to capacity,
being used to run a few head' of stock and some poultry,
while sometimes it is sublet to a neighbour.
Most licensees in the smaller villages use their premises
primarily as their homes. The characteristic house of the area
is small and old, with little accommodation for its guests
other than the public bar, and this, not infrequently, is also
the household kitchen in which the family lives and takes its
meals during closed hours. Notwithstanding the primitive
accommodation, however, the village pub is the centre round
which much of the life of the place revolves, and given a good
landlord, it can exert a strong influence for neighbourliness
and good relations in the community.
Games and conversation occupy the evening dominoes
(3*3 and 5's), darts, cribbage, a form of solo whist in which no
money passes, and, in the few larger houses, bagatelle and bar
billiards. The pin-table type of game is not popular. Con-
versation is simple and honest, concerned with each other's
gardens, allotments, and daily work, while the quality of the
local farming is always a sure bait to draw discussion. Politics
and religion are rarely raised in conversation, and the men are
never heard to discuss the cinema. The wireless is not often
turned on, but all life in the pub may stop for 'the nine
o'clock', or when racing or football results are being an-
nounced. Women-folk have been seen but seldom in the
licensed houses of the Survey area, but they are beginning to
come in greater numbers with the spread of factory work
since the war, which has given them more money to spend.
On the whole, the rural community is not yet used to seeing
its women in the pubs.
The importance of Slate and Thrift Clubs to the village
has already been mentioned. Most licensed houses run either
one or other, and it was the only way in which many of the
PUBLIC HOUSES
IN THE SURVEY AREA
Above: A village street. Below: A derelict water-mill
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 231
poorer people could save money for the children's clothes and
boots.
The licensed houses in the Survey area are generally
old-fashioned and primitive. In character many of them
resemble the old houses in which their customers live, and
while this may promote the 'home-from-home' feeling, it
seems to fall a long way short of what is desirable in what is
virtually the village club. Nor are some of the more modern
houses any great improvement, resembling, as they tend to do,
small Victorian villa residences, their front rooms uncom-
fortably adapted to the purposes of 'Tap Room* and * Saloon
Bar'. Any reconstruction policy, however, needs most careful
consideration. To turn the village pub into a road-house,
catering for the passing motorist or for convivial spirits from
the nearest town, would be disastrous. If there be a demand
for such places, they should be provided in addition to, not in
substitution for, the village pub. It is possible that with the
growth of Village Social Centres a licensed bar room might
meet the need for better accommodation and entertainment
for the village folk. Whatever be attempted, however, to
secure improved conditions of refreshment and entertain-
ment, the keynote must be the sodality of the villagers
themselves.
VILLAGE HALLS
A necessary condition for social organizations and activities
in a village is that there should be a hall or other suitable meet-
ing-place. If there be no village hall, nor any room which can be
used as a hall, such things as dances, socials, concerts, &c.,
are almost impossible. In one of the villages of the Survey
area, the only available hall is an old schoolhouse, which is so
unsuitable that it is seldom used it is dark, unattractive, and
extremely inconvenient. In two other places, the village
schools are used. These are available only on Friday nights
and during holidays, or else they involve the inconvenience
of cleaning up before the next morning's school; and they
are structurally unsuitable for the kind of activities for which
the people want to use them.
232 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
Another village demonstrates the truth of the saying that
'the good is the enemy of the better'. No one has been con-
cerned to procure the erection of a Village Hall, because a
building suitable in every way already exists. But its use
has to be paid for on every occasion, and this imposes re-
strictions on its usefulness. In still another of the villages,
the hall, also very suitable, is private property, though it is
lent freely and unconditionally by a generous and public-
spirited owner. Failing any dedication by him, however,
no one can tell what may happen to it in the future. 1 Three of
the villages are equipped with Village Halls, designed and
built as such, and vested in committees of the people.
Village Halls are provided in various ways. Money is
raised by subscription, by organizing fetes and other special
events in the village, and substantial help is got, sometimes,
from a well-to-do benefactor interested in the place, or from
outside bodies, such as the National Council of Social Service
and the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, interested in the
promotion of rural social life. Still another scheme is de-
scribed later (p. 234 sq.) which is original and has proved
successful. Often it will take some time, after the decision
to build a hall has been reached, to raise enough money to
go ahead with the work, but this is said to be no real dis-
advantage, for the village is much more interested in the hall
which it has paid for than in one which has been handed
out to it.
SOCIAL CENTRES
It should be the object of every village community, not thus
equipped already, to secure an adequate meeting-place and
centre for its social activities, and generally it has been
assumed that a Village Hall meets this need. In the foregoing
paragraphs its usefulness has been emphasized. At the same
time, essential though it be, the Village Hall is often a very
1 In another part of the country a truly magnificent Village Hall, built
by a wealthy man as a memorial to his tenants and servants who served in
the last war, was put up to auction at his death for conversion into a week-
end cottage.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 233
lifeless thing. It stands out prominently in the village, a
building too rarely of any architectural merit, and with every
suggestion about it of 'shut-upness'. All day long and day
after day it is unused, and in many places it is open only
occasionally in the evenings during the summer. Sometimes
it may become a Village Club in the winter evenings; other-
wise the Village Hall is a mere accommodation for whist
drives, dances, and occasional meetings.
This is no disparagement of the Village Hall. The circum-
stances of any rural community call for accommodation
such as the hall provides, quite apart from the question of the
community being large enough and varied enough to put it to
any fuller use. In the replanning of the country-side, how-
ever, the time has surely come to consider whether something
more than this is not now desirable, or even necessary, in the
larger villages whether Community or Social Centres rather
than Village Halls are not called for.
A Social Centre would include a large room, with platform
and all the other equipment of any well-found Village Hall,
where concerts, theatricals, dances, whist drives, &c., would
be accommodated, but it should provide much more than this.
How many villages have got a reading room and library ? How
many young mothers are cut off entirely from the social inter-
course of the Women's Institute and other organizations
because there is no room attached to the meeting-place where
their babies or young children might be left in somebody's
charge, but within easy reach of their mothers ? What accom-
modation is there for clinics of all kinds, for the medical and
dental inspections of the schoolchildren, for Parliamentary
and County elections, for W.E.A. classes and discussion
societies ? More important still as a problem of the immediate
future indeed of the present in not a few places is that of
proper accommodation for schoolchildren* s meals, with the
further possibility of a community restaurant which might
combine catering for the children and for adults. Not to
labour the needs of many of the larger villages for a communal
centre, one more example may suffice. How many villages
have anything to offer in the way of rest and refreshment for
234 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
the visitor? The hiker walking through on a hot afternoon
finds that the village inn is closed until 6 o'clock, or later on
Sundays. The motorist who has stopped to look at the church
and have a walk round the village cannot get a cup of tea
before he goes on. There is no place where any of them, men
or women, can have a wash and brush up.
The suggestion is that all these wants might be satisfied by
the provision of a Village Social Centre rather than a Village
Hall. The hall would be included, of course, but there would
be, also, subsidiary rooms to serve the other purposes men-
tioned above. There would be a kitchen, scullery, &c.,
where school meals, communal lunches, refreshments for
socials, teas for casual visitors, could be prepared. There
would be dressing rooms and lavatories for men and women.
An essential feature of the centre would be accommodation
for a married couple as resident caretakers, whose business it
would be, besides cleaning and caretaking, to undertake the
refreshments for casual visitors, and generally to arrange for
and assist at the functions for which the hall was used. The
opportunity of occupying modern well-equipped accommoda-
tion and of earning a steady income for services rendered to
gatherings of all kinds, should make the appointment of
caretaker good enough to attract a competent couple.
The problem of finance, of course, presents itself. A village
centre of this kind would cost a considerable sum. In some
places it is more than likely that a large house might be avail-
able for adaptation, and the Vicarage or Rectory House, where
benefices have been amalgamated, suggests itself at once.
Even where there has been no union of benefices, the parson
is often over-housed, as has been pointed out already. In one
of the smaller villages of the Survey area, where there is a
small stipend and a big house, the parson has let the Vicarage,
reserving two rooms for his own use, and making the condition
that his tenants will board him. For him and for many others,
life would be more tolerable in a smaller house, and the big
Parsonage, always centrally placed, should be easily and
economically adapted to the purposes of the Village Centre.
(See Plan.)
Tennis Lauin
Boujimg Green
A RURAL COMMUNITY CENTRE ADAPTED
WITH ADDITIONS FROM AN
UNOCCUPIED RECTORY
r
Exit
1 Dining I I
1 I 1 H
fj Tco Room 1 1 |
Lodic'* Cloakroom
f~l ^"l) Covered
ScollcrJ I I Yopd
Womni -4 M<n *
Room || i> f II Room
iz* f ji ' . piq| pm
L
1 1 1 1
1 ^ | | 1
|..c^p...|
Pbrr,-r,bn . . i
E .,
Orchard
............
1 I i 1
1 II 1
1 1 1 1
Vegetable Garden
"ll 'J 1'
3^F- ib tBEf
h
Old building
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
UPPER FLOOR PLAN
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 235
A novel and interesting method of financing a Social Centre
was described by the rector of a small parish in a neighbouring
county, a country parish with a population of 600 people, and
nothing to differentiate it from hundreds of others. Here is
the rector's own account of what he did.
Here I found no semblance of community life when I came,
beyond occasional whist drives in a simply appallingly decrepit
and desolate Army Hut. I was told that it was no good trying to
do anything I was definitely warned by my predecessor not to
try that this place was beyond salvation, and that if I did start
anything it would not last more than twelve months. I waited a
little while, then called a Village Meeting. I put before them
a scheme for a Social Centre for the village and asked for 400 to
be subscribed in 5$. shares. I only asked for 200 at first, but
increased it afterwards to 400. I got all the money I wanted, and
there were not six houses in the village which did not take up
some shares. With that I redecorated and relined the large Army
Hut, put in central heating and electric light, a first-class billiard
table, and every other kind of game, a really good radiogram,
card tables, chairs, and we fixed up a good kitchen, with gas-
cooker, &c. The hut was large enough to divide into a good billiard
room, and a reasonable-sized dance hall with stage, as well as a
further room for committees and a library. The village looked
sceptical, and many said *I give it twelve months, no more! * It
has been going three and a half years now ; we have paid for every-
thing and we have 150 in war savings; we have paid about 2$s.
a week in wages, and raised literally hundreds of pounds tor
various war charities. It is open every night, Sundays included,
and our weekly takings from games amount to about 2. Except
for one good Quaker who is our Treasurer, the ' Gentry ' have
nothing to do with it. They are not unsympathetic, but I run it
through a Council of the villagers. Everybody admits now that it
is a roaring success. All through last winter I ran a Cinema show
(16 mm.) which was well patronized, and we have had lectures of
various kinds, a few plays, and other entertainments.
I encourage membership from neighbouring villages. . . .
That describes how one successful Social Centre has been
established, and there may be other places in which the same
means might succeed. A Village Hall already built could be
the nucleus of the larger organization in many villages; in
236 SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
others a cottage which could be adapted for the caretakers*
quarters might be the beginning. But in places in which
there was no accommodation which could be adapted and
extended at moderate cost, and the Social Centre had to be
constructed entire, the parish desirous of proceeding would
be able to use its powers under the Local Government Acts
to raise a loan to meet the capital cost, and to levy a rate, if
there were any deficit to be met on the year's income-and-
expenditure account.
In the Village Colleges of Cambridgeshire, described
briefly in an earlier chapter, nearly everything provided or
contemplated by Village Social Centres is already in being.
The fundamental differences are in the area of organization,
which is regional for the colleges rather than parochial, and
in the idea that social activities should be built up round edu-
cational institutions. Thus, the Village College is the senior
school for a region of about ten parishes, it is the centre of adult
education and, at the same time, the social and recreational
focus for them. For the smaller parishes, unlikely to be
affected by the decentralization of industry and incapable
of independent organization, the Village College offers many
advantages over any other kind of community centre.
CHAPTER XIII
SUMMARY AND DIGEST
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT; FARMS AND FARMING; RURAL INDUSTRIES;
RURAL ADMINISTRATION; HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES;
EDUCATION; THE YOUTH SERVICE; HEALTH SERVICES; RELIGIOUS
ORGANIZATIONS; ENDOWED CHARITIES; SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND
ORGANIZATIONS.
IT will be recalled that, so far as possible, this economic and
social survey was to be objective. It was planned to establish
the facts of the countryman's life, to point out their conse-
quences, to compare them with conditions, as established,
in the lives of other sections of the community. Criticism
might sometimes be implied ; the form of reconstruction might
be suggested. In the main, however, the Survey was to be
no more than a 'pilot 1 survey, an experiment in the investi-
gation of conditions of life and living as they are, which might
provide a basis for reshaping them more as they should be.
In the foregoing chapters the life of the countryman, as
exemplified by conditions in the Survey area, has been
followed from the prenatal clinic to the old-age pension
his education, his adolescence and employment, his housing,
health, citizenship, social life, and recreations. All these and
some other things, it has been suggested, are one complex
making up the countryman's life and they should be con-
sidered together, not in isolation, in any attempt to give him
better physical conditions and more opportunities for social
and economic advancement. Nor is it only the country
worker who is involved, for it is impossible to solve his prob-
lems in many of the villages and smaller towns without
considering how to reintroduce some form of industrial life
to supplement the agricultural, and to re-create that more
varied society, with its wider opportunities and interests,
which has been lost to them since the rural industries decayed
and the village tradesmen disappeared.
THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOT
No special significance attaches to the Survey area. It was
238 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
chosen only for reasons of expediency, and any other country
district would have served as well. It follows, of course, that
no reflections upon the people living in it are implied in the
descriptions of matters calling for reform which the Survey
has brought to light, whether in the social or in the economic
order. They serve merely as illustrations of the unfavourable
conditions under which too many people have to live and
work, with local differences of course, throughout the length
and breadth of rural England.
The topography of the Survey area raises no particular
problems, and the constitution of the population has already
been described. The striking things about it are the large
numbers of non-agricultural workers it discloses in a district
which, to the eye, is entirely rural and somewhat of a back-
water at that ; the high proportion of old-age pensioners and
retired persons; and the heavy and continuous decline in the
total population of the area during the last two generations.
On the first of these points, the tendency of the farming
industry for the last twenty years of the nineteenth century
was, all the time, towards the less intensive use of the land
and, consequently, a smaller demand for labour. The changes
in the farming practices of this century, while tending,
probably, towards higher standards of production, have been
associated with the mechanization of manual-labour processes,
and this has done nothing to arrest the fall in the demand.
While the effects of these conditions are illustrated in the
unbroken decline in the total population of the area, it is a
fair assumption that if an occupational census could have
been presented, covering the last thirty years, it would show
that this decline was confined to employment in agriculture
and its allied industries, and that the tendeijcy of non-
agricultural employment had been to increase, especially
during the last ten years. Most of the industrial workers
living in the Survey area are country-bred, agricultural stock
whom changing circumstances the decline of employment
in farming, the demand for labour in a factory industry a few
miles outside the area, and the organization of transport
have driven or attracted into other work.
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 239
As for the old people, the agricultural labourer past work
stays naturally enough amongst his friends. There is also
a class of persons, not inconsiderable, pensioners from the
police, the Post Office, the railway, and others, or persons
who have saved something in small businesses, who are glad
to retire into the country, where living is cheap and life is
quiet, to spend their declining years.
This question of the decline in the agricultural population
is important in country planning, and it calls for consideration
more careful than it has had. It is commonly assumed that a
larger agricultural population is desirable. Phrases such as
'the rural exodus', 'the drift to the towns', 'getting people
back to the land', and 'the need for a better balance between
town and country' are common, and the implications are
obvious the dwindling number of those who follow the
plough is to be deplored, the growing disparity between town
and country workers is dangerous, and something ought to be
done about it. It is not always remembered, perhaps, thgtt the
extent of farming in this country has long reached its limits.
Britain is an island, and for all practical purposes there is no
more farming land available. On the contrary, the needs of
an increasing industrial population are constantly with-
drawing land from agricultural use. Between 1881 and the
outbreak of the present war, the extent of farming land in the
county of the Survey area one not highly industrialized
has fallen from 417,000 to 386,000 acres, a fall of 8 per cent.,
which has been further accentuated during the war years by
the withdrawal of land for military purposes. It is obvious,
therefore, that agriculture, as practised, could have no
additional employment to offer, and when it is remembered
that the whole tendency of farming practice in recent years
has been to use machines for the performance of many of the
old manual- and horse-labour operations, it is still further
apparent that the demand for labour on the land could only
have fallen. Nor is it an answer to say that the use of more
intensive methods of production, such as market gardening
and dairying, would keep up or increase the demand. Cases
can be cited where this has occurred, but it is not always so.
240 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
On a big farm of some 1,200 acres, in Worcestershire, the
area of 'market crops' was increased from 65 to some 250
acres between the years 1920 and 1935, but the labour staff
on the whole farm actually declined from 35 to 30 men during
that time, and the horses from 50 to 6, notwithstanding the
great increase in the intensity of production. This was the
result, of course, of the introduction of machinery of all
kinds. Intensive farming, therefore, offers no easy opening
for additional agricultural labour.
The mechanization of farming processes, which was going
on apace before the war and which the war has speeded up,
makes it possible, sometimes, for a farmer to strike out in
new directions calling for the employment of more men.
More often it enables him to carry out his customary opera-
tions at peed and with fewer men, and it enables the farm
worker to increase the output of his labour and thus to qualify
for higher wages. It follows, speaking generally, that an
increase in the agricultural population, whether by 'stopping
the drift to the towns' or by 'bringing people back to the land* ,
could be achieved, in the long run, only at the expense of the
standard of living of farmers and farm workers. Country
planners must consider whether it be more desirable to have
an industry numerically small by contrast with the employ-
ment which it afforded in times past, but one which, though
still tending to decline rather than to increase, affords never-
theless a good standard of living to those who follow it or
whether there be social or other reasons for making an
exception of agriculture amongst the nation's larger industries
and organizing so as to increase employment in it at the cost
of the standard of living. By a subdivision of the larger
farms into smallholdings, operated more by family labour
than by hired workers, employment could be increased to an
intensity corresponding to that of many of the European
peasant countries, but this could be achieved only by a fall
in the standard of living to the continental level. The ten-
dency of industrial organization in Britain has been all in the
other direction, that is, to improve the workers' economic
status, and in a stabilized industry, such as farming, this
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 241
tendency towards smaller numbers is the inevitable conse-
quence.
It is claimed, not uncommonly, for farming, that it is
something more than a living it is said to be also a way of
life. The implication is, of course, that farmers and farm
workers are actuated not only by the desire for profits and
wages, but that they find a peculiar satisfaction in farming
which is not afforded by other activities, and this must be
taken into account in considering the economic and social
opportunities of the rural worker. It may be doubted
whether those who follow husbandry for a living have ever
regarded it from this angle. In the olden days, when most
men were farming for their own subsistence, life was often a
grim business, and famine and starvation were never very far
away. In recent times, when farming in this country has been
entirely commercialized, it is safe to assume that nobody
inside the industry thinks of it otherwise than as a means to
a living, and it is judged accordingly. To quote a young
countryman, * Farming's no good! You earn the same at 60
as you do at 20, and once the war's over, I'm away!'
It is no use to say that this is sheer materialism, and that
there are other values. It will be a long time before the mass
of rural workers are likely to be corrupted by prosperity, but
the controversy over the merits of large farms and small-
holdings is Jikely to continue. The issue is partly political and
partly sentimental. As an economic proposition there is no
question of the advantages of the large farm, both for the
employment of capital and for the remuneration of labour.
Yet in the English counties taken together, and omitting all
holdings not exceeding 5 acres, more than 71 per cent, of the
farms do not exceed 100 acres; in the county of the Survey
area farms are larger, the proportion not exceeding this figure
being 55 per cent., and it is the same in the area itself.
The problem presented by the smallness of the unit occurs
also in the village communities. The average population
of the three larger parishes in the Survey area was i , 1 56 at the
last census ; of the thirteen smaller ones it was 216 say, some
fifty to sixty families and still falling. In every phase of
242 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
their existence, economic, social, and administrative, the
difficulty of providing satisfactorily for the little communities
seems insuperable. It suggests, at once, the importance of
public transport and communications. The little villages are
deficient in so many of the services which the dweller in the
larger places finds at his door shops for the purchase of food,
clothing, and household requisites; medical and hospital
services; recreation and entertainment that they depend,
very largely, upon quick and easy transport to bring some of
these services to them, or to enable their inhabitants to go
away for them. But the smallness of the traffic makes the
organization of frequent and regular services very difficult,
and once again the problem of how to provide a comparable
life for the dwellers in these little places presents itself.
FARMS AND FARMING
The basic occupation of the Survey area is farming, and
one purpose of the Survey has been to find out the strength
and the weakness of the conditions, both economic and social,
under which farming is followed.
The results disclose a position which does not differ,
probably, from that which might be expected in almost any
other part of the country, but it is one which differentiates
agriculture from all the other big national industries.
Briefly, this is the rigidity of the unit of production, the farm
unit and its equipment, and the absence, hitherto, except in
rare instances, of attempts to adapt either of them to the
changing circumstances of food production and of modern
industrial organization. In the Survey area, one or two
large farms are known to have been split up to make
several smaller ones, and here and there a new building has
been erected, but with these negligible exceptions the farms
are disclosed as being still as they were laid out, following
inclosure, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
To consider, first, the sizes of the holdings, nearly half of
the Survey are& is given up to farms not exceeding 150 acres,
and there are only six farmers who occupy more than 300
acres apiece. Thus, it resembles most districts of England in
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 243
that it is an area mainly of small farms. As to their layout,
the Survey has shown that very few of these farms, even the
smaller ones, have been planned with any obvious regard for
convenience of management. More than 25 per cent, of them
lie not compact in ring fences but in two, three, and even up
to six detached blocks. Others suffer from various defects
and awkward features. Some have poor access; others are
badly shaped, necessitating long journeys to the remoter parts ;
others are intersected by roads or railway ; others, again, have
their farm-houses and buildings badly sited for convenience
of working, and with very few exceptions the buildings are
obsolete, dilapidated, or inadequate.
There are other considerations, too, which cannot be
ignored in connexion with the efficiency of the farming unit.
The relation of the farm to the different kinds of soil is shown
to be entirely haphazard, and while this may be difficult to
avoid in any district where soils change rapidly, another
handicap to good farming, the awkward sizes and shapes of
many of the fields, is less easily justified. Fields are mostly
small, half of them being less than 10 acres, and while it is
obvious that the most convenient shape for farm operations
would be the rectangle, more than three-quarters of the
fields in the Survey area have irregular boundaries.
In short, to repeat what has been said already, the farm
layout follows no recognizable plan, and it incorporates a
large measure of inconvenience.
Turning, now, to the farm buildings of the Survey area,
these have been designed for a system of farming now
obsolete. Historical and statistical data show that this area,
like so many parts of England, was given up for long years
mainly to corn and meat production, and it was during this
era that the present-day building equipment was planned and
erected barns for storing and threshing corn, straw-yards
and shelter-sheds for feeding cattle and making manure.
Consider, for a moment, the implications of this position.
It is apparent that the farms of the Survey area have, been
assembled, laid out, and equipped for the practice of farming
as it was carried on more than two generations ago, and that
244 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
since that time there have been very few material changes
made in them. Is it to be assumed, therefore, that the far-
reaching changes which have occurred during that time in
farming systems, in technical inventions, in the use and the
reward of labour, have not called for any reorganization of the
unit of production or of its equipment ? Dairy farming has
displaced much of the corn and meat production. Horses
have given place to machines with an output of work four or
five times as great. Scientific research, harnessed to com-
mercial enterprise, has enormously increased the production
and variety of fertilizers and feeding-stuffs, which have
revolutionized methods of feeding crops and live stock.
Labour on the land, then underpaid and overworked, is now
as highly regulated as that in any other organized industry.
Certain is it that large numbers of farms throughout the
country would confirm the evidence of those in the Survey
area, namely that ancient bullock-sheds do not make good
modern cowhouses; that corn barns are unsuitable for use
and expensive to maintain as food stores and implement sheds ;
that small and irregular fields are ill adapted to the tractor
and the combine-harvester ; that a new conception of labour
organization and of the scale of the farmer's business are
needed, if agriculture is to compete in the world market and
to offer a life and a living to the young men of to-day. In
short, farming is putting new wine into very old bottles.
The tale can be continued almost indefinitely. New
methods call for new equipment. In pre-depression days,
when so much of the land was producing corn, there was no
need to water it for live stock, but under systems of permanent
grassland for milk or meat production, which took the place
of ploughland, and of the temporary pastures of alternate
husbandry which are now displacing permanent pastures,
every field demands its watering-place. In the Survey area,
the swing-over to milk production, which economic re-
organization demanded, has been checked on several farms
by the want of water-supplies in the fields for the stock, and
at the homestead for the milk cooler and the cowshed. Over-
riding all is the handicap of the smallness of the farms them-
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 245
selves, which prevents men able and willing to invest capital
in modern equipment to organize their farming on a scale
approximating even remotely to that of modern industry, and
drives them to make shift as best they may on collections of
small farms, frequently not even adjacent one to another.
Then there is the question of the farm worker. There is no
need to appeal for justice for him, for his right to a square
deal; in the present-day world of industry things have passed
that stage. The position is that unless he can be offered
employment which will ensure him the opportunity to work
and to live under conditions which compare with those
offered to skilled workers in other trades, he will not stay on
the land. This means, first, that farming must be organized
so that the product of his labour may entitle him to a com-
parable wage and the chance of improving his position;
second, that he must enjoy amenities of life such as are
available to other workers. In particular, the standard of his
housing must be improved in many places, and the public
services, water, electricity, and sewerage, must no longer be
denied him ; above all, he must be called upon no more to live
in a service cottage. There is nothing new to be said in
defence of the 'tied' cottage. The evidence of the Survey is
that modern methods of communication have destroyed the
arguments put forward for so long in its favour.
Speaking at the Farmers' Club, in London, the President
of the National Union of Agricultural Workers quoted figures
from Oxfordshire to show that the number of farm workers
not exceeding 21 years of age fell, in that county, from 1,931
to under 1,000 between the years 1923 and 1935.' This was
the measure of their assessment of the comparative attrac-
tions of work on the land and work in other local industries,
and it is the situation which employers of agricultural labour
have got to face.
Farms in the Survey area provide examples of all these
handicaps on the efficient practice of modern farming. The
Report has shown, however, how they might be reassembled
1 'The Worker and Post-war Agriculture', E. G. Gooch, C.B.E., J.P.,
Journal of the Farmers' Club, Part 3, 1944.
^46 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
and re-equipped. Examples of the suggested reconstruction
have been given, by reference to groups of holdings in the
area, to show how farm boundaries could be rearranged so as
to improve the compactness of the layout, how fields could
be enlarged and their boundaries rectified so as to give scope
for modern farm machinery, how farms could be extended to
give more opportunity for the 'application of the science of
management and for the use and advancement of skilled
labour. It was stated that the proposals for the necessary
regrouping assumed {hat no difficulty would arise over the
problems of finance and of the great diversity of ownership ;
for the purposes of the example, the co-operation of land-
owners and their willingness to give and take were taken for
granted. In practice, of course, this is assuming far too much
on both counts. No direct evidence was available of the
ability or the readiness of landowners to shoulder the heavy
financial burden which would be laid upon them by the
readjustment of their farms to take advantage of all that
modern science and invention and organization can offer.
An example was given, however, of the extraordinary diversity
of ownership a straight line running for six miles diagonally
across the area was shown to cut twenty-seven farm boundaries
and to pass over no fewer than twenty-three different owner-
ships which suggested that the regrouping of fields and
farms according to the dictates pf industrial efficiency,
rigidly applied, would be a matter of extreme difficulty.
It is at this point that country planning comes against a
political issue which the nation has surely got to face in the
near future. Over large parts of the country, generalizing
from the evidence of the Survey area and from the personal
experience of the investigators in other parts of England, the
land is crying out for reassembly and for re-equipment in
units to fit it for the practice of modern farming, if operating
costs are to be reduced to the minimum and if the conditions
of employment on the land are to be improved. How is it to be
done ? It is work which will call for a great capital outlay and
for complicated and difficult agreements and exchanges
amongst property owners. On the other hand, only by such
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 247
reconstruction will it be possible to raise the efficiency of food
production in this country to a higher standard, and to show
in what commodities and to what extent the home farmer can
compete, without State assistance, in the world market.
This is the political issue which the State must face, and it
is perfectly clear. Is the nation to remain content with the
present organization, which involves and will continue to
involve the subsidy of landowners and farmers at a heavy
cost if the agricultural industry is not to be allowed slowly
to decline, once more, in the face of the competition of
countries more efficiently organized or content with lower
standards of living ? Alternatively, is the nation prepared to
face the task of the reconstruction of the farming unit on a
wide scale a new inclosure movement so as to allow the
industry to function with a greater degree of efficiency,
involving, as it would, the further decision whether it were
better to assist the present owners of property to undertake
the work, by means of subsidies, remissions of taxation, and
cheap credit, or whether the State should take over the land-
owners' responsibilities and carry through the reorganization
itself?
Any of these alternatives, other than that of consenting
to stagnation and decline, will involve the State in expenditure
of public money. The question whether it should be used to
stereotype or to develop farms and farming is outside the
scope of this Survey, which can do no more than elucidate the
facts of the present position and indicate the alternative lines
of policy. Whatever method be adopted, should the new
inclosure movement be the policy, the change could only
be made slowly, as the interests of sitting tenants would have
to be respected. Only as farms came on offer could plans
made for their reassembly for more economic use be carried
through.
Smallholdings, attractive to some land reformers, have been
provided in the model reconstructions only incidentally, where
small areas, particularly near villages, were found to fit badly
into larger units. Although the experience of the Survey
is that larger, not smaller, farms are wanted in the brave
248 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
new world, there are good grounds for providing, also, for a
small number of family-farmers. There is the problem just
mentioned, of how to make the best use of the land adjacent
to the villages, where small producer-retailers may perform
special services for the community by selling milk, eggs, and
poultry, market-garden produce, and so on. Here and there,
too, are men who must be the controllers of their own destinies
if they are to be happy, who are prepared to pay a price for it
in the long hours of toil for a poor reward, which is the
experience of the majority of smallholders.
Economically, there is a strong case for the large farm,
well equipped and managed, and a limited case for the small-
holder. The former has all the advantages of large-scale pro-
duction, bulk purchase, and scientific management; the latter,
being self-sufficient in many things and independent of the
labour market, with its statutory wages and hours, has an
economic strength of an entirely different order. The food-
producer on a scale between the two, his farm too large to be
worked entirely by family labour, too small for the use of
labour-saving machinery and paid management, who re-
presents, nevertheless, by far the largest number of farmers
in this country to-day, is in the weakest economic position.
The form of reconstruction proposed in this Report, which
disregards any political considerations and considers only the
efficiency of food-production, would absorb his farm in a
large-scale capitalist enterprise rather than divide it into still
smaller units.
The Minister of Agriculture, Mr. R. S. Hudson, has stated
publicly that farming in this country is not so efficient as it
should be, and that the agricultural community cannot expect
to have public support for their industry while it remains
inefficient. 1 The inclosure and redistribution of the land,
which was carried out so widely during the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries and which gave the country its
farms as they are, was undertaken for profit. To-day, another
redistribution and re-equipment of the land is necessary, for
survival.
1 See The Times, 16 March 1944.
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 249
RURAL INDUSTRIES
The Survey shows that industrial life in the area covered
by it is almost non-existent. The little water-mills, in-
geniously contrived on the small streams rising in the area,
are most of them derelict. The twenty-two smiths, wheel-
wrights, and saddlers of forty years ago are reduced to half a
dozen. The smiths may be able to persist, and even to
flourish, if they can adapt themselves to the requirements of
modern agricultural machinery, and develop the same skill in
the repair of the tractor and its attendant implements that
they have shown for centuries past in shoeing and in the
repair of horse-drawn implements, but it is difficult to see any
clear future for the other trades.
As to the non-agricultural industries, ironstone is the most
important to-day, but it is subject to severe depressions, and
its post-war future is uncertain. The picturesque plush-
making industry, once occupying some thirty weavers on
the production of rich-coloured cloths, which was spread
amongst a few of the villages on the north-west border of the
Survey area, must be regarded, probably, as finished.
Reference is made elsewhere to the impoverishment of
rural society by the disappearance of practically all of the local
industries which abounded even in living memory. In all
but the merest hamlets, they provided employment alternative
to agriculture, and they contributed a diversity of interest
which is lacking to-day. On these grounds their disappearance
is to be regretted, but it is difficult to see any hope of revival
for most of them under modern conditions of industrial
organization. At the same time, the desirability of a restora-
tion of a better balance between agricultural and industrial
life is suggested by all the evidence of the Survey. How this
is being achieved by the migration of factory industry into
rural areas, and how this new manifestation in rural life
should be directed, are matters which are discussed in a later
section.
RURAL ADMINISTRATION
The country-side has now had fifty years' experience of
aso SUMMARY AND DIGEST
rural administration under the Local Government Act which
set up the Parish Meetings, the Parish Councils, and the Dis-
trict Councils. On all sides it is agreed that amendments and
reforms are needed, but the Government has announced that
legislation cannot be initiated until after the war. This waiting
period should provide the opportunity for a full consideration
of the matter, and for the preparation of plans. In this
connexion, the Survey has provided useful evidence, which is
typical, almost certainly, of large areas of rural England.
Reconstruction of rural administration on a wide and
comprehensive scale seems to be indicated, for there are
signs that the whole structure of local government, as orga-
nized under County, District, and Parish Councils, is breaking
down.
For some time past, the tendency has been to centralize
control more and more, and the indications are that still more
is to be expected. Parish Councils have never had much
effective authority in the smaller villages, partly from the
difficulty of getting adequate representation of the people
upon them, and partly because they are stultified in the exer-
cise of their fairly extensive powers by the impossibility of
financing them. Rural District Councils, which had various
executive functions, and which, in their alternative capacity
of Boards of Guardians, administered the Poor Law, have
ceded most of these functions to the County Council; to-day,
their main business is to administer the Housing and Public
Health Acts, and to act as the assessment and rating authority.
In their turn, the County Councils are being shorn of some of
their powers by the central Government, and other losses are
in prospect.
Some purely local and even voluntary organizations, such as
main roads and fire services, have already been nationalized.
The provisions of the Education Bill and the White Paper on
the Health Services suggest that transference of control or
the assumption of greater powers of direction by the central
Government may be expected in many matters. Farmers,
for example, must have been interested to learn that it is the
intention of the Minister of Agriculture to take agricultural
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 251
education and advisory work out of the hands of the County
Councils, handifig over the responsibility for technical educa-
tion at Farm Institutes to the Board of Education and putting
the farmers' advisory service into the hands of his own
Ministry. The changes made and contemplated have arisen,
doubtless, out of the very considerable experience which has
been accumulated of the working of local administration
during the past fifty years. To the extent, however, that
every further move towards centralization of authority must
weaken the feeling of personal responsibility in the individual
for the circumstances of his own life, they are to be regretted.
Undoubtedly, the Parish Council could and should be a
body really representative of the inhabitants. The area which
it administers is small enough for everyone to understand its
needs, and the characters and suitability of candidates for the
Council are known to all the electors. If election by ballot
were substituted for that by show of hands, the Parish
Council could be the most truly democratic and representa-
tive administrative body in the country.
The Rural District Councils and the County Councils are
not in any real sense representative bodies. They tend to be
entirely self-constituted, and they are drawn almost exclusive-
ly from the employer class, for attendances at their meetings
during the normal working hours of the day, which member-
ship requires, make it impossible for any of the largest
section of the community to seek election.
These are matters which seem to call for consideration and
reform, but what is of even greater importance than the
personnel and representative character of local government
are the principles upoi\ which local administration of all
kinds is financed. At the present time, specific matters
may be financed by the National Exchequer, or by County,
District, or Parish rates, or even by a rate upon a special part
of a parish, and extraordinary anomalies and injustices are the
result. When the City of Oxford decided to provide a public
water-supply, or a public sewerage system, or to take over the
electricity supply, it was dealing with a population densely
packed together on a narrow strip of land between two rivers.
*5* SUMMARY AND DIGEST
Distribution costs were low because the houses to be served
were close together; overheads were low by reason of the size
of the population. If a country parish, comprising fifty or
sixty families in a village, half a dozen farm houses scattered
about it, and a* dozen or two isolated farm- workers' cottages,
is to be supplied with any of these services, distribution costs
and overheads per household are immensely higher, but they
must be borne entirely by the parish, and sometimes by a
special area of the parish, in cases in which the remoter in-
habitants are excluded from the services.
Nor does this tell the whole story of the countryman's
disadvantage. It may be feasible to dam a river valley in the
Welsh mountains, or to harness a lake in Cumberland, to
give a water-supply for some great industrial town, and to
give it at a very cheap rate. On the other hand, even a simple
bore-hole, a small reservoir, and a little oil-engine and pump
to fill it, may be a considerable burden on a village
community, whose only alternatives are inadequate or con-
taminated supplies. Whatever the form which local admini-
stration in rural areas may take in the future, is it not time
that the nation ceased to treat the countryman as someone
whose needs are different from those of the urban community ?
Recent reforms in the administration of the Poor Law have
led to the abandonment of the treatment of old or unfortunate
people, of mental defectives and orphaned children, on the
basis that tjiey are paupers. They are cases for Public Assis-
tance, for the Public Health service, or for the Education
Authority. Is it not time that the countryman ceased to be
put in a class apart, and that his rights to equal treatment,
as a citizen and taxpayer, were recognized? As things are,
he has to forgo many of the comforts and even the decencies
of life, so that dwellers in the towns and industrial districts
may enjoy them at a fractionally lower cost. These conditions
must continue while local government and local finance go
hand in hand. In some things, of which the main roads are
perhaps a good example, the principle of national responsi-
bility for financing a national service, while localizing
administrative responsibility for it, has been conceded, and
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 253
large Exchequer grants are made to County Councils for the
maintehance of through roads. While, however, there are
sound reasons for making all possible use of the local know-
ledge of conditions and needs which resides in County and
even in Parish Councils, and of the voluntary service which
their members are prepared to give, there can be no possible
justification for depriving anyone of essential public services
or of penalizing him in their cost because he is a countryman.
Every worker to-day, black-coated or horny-handed, con-
tributes according to his means to the national Exchequer.
It is for the nation to distribute its income equitably amongst
all classes.
HOUSING AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES
The survey of the housing conditions in the area raises
far-reaching issues. Conforming to a very definite building
tradition, characteristic of the area and of the country im-
mediately surrounding it, the villages surveyed call for special
consideration if this tradition is to be preserved. The
evidence of derelict houses in every one of them suggests that
the treatment of disrepair has been the demolition order
rather than reconditioning. Here is a further example, it
would seem, of the need for a higher control, with larger
powers, and particularly with a wider vision, than can be
expected of local Sanitary authorities. These villages, like
so many others in all parts of the country, are part of the
nation's heritage of beauty; is it too much to suggest that the
nation should assume responsibility both for the maintenance
of this inheritance and for its augmentation? The local
Sanitary authorities are concerned, and rightly, to see that
people are housed in weather-proof buildings which conform
to minimum standards for health. It is their duty, also, to
supervise the erection of new dwellings by private enterprise,
and to inaugurate and to carry out housing schemes them-
selves. In all these matters their criterion is conformity with
these same standards for minimum health requirements, and,
for their own housing schemes, minimum expenditure.
Questions of aesthetics are considered only rarely, and, where
254 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
public expenditure on housing schemes is involved, it may be
taken for granted that economy of construction is the main
consideration.
The suggestion is that the time has come for the exercise
of much more discrimination and control in rural housing.
As to old housing, there should be an alternative course, other
than the demolition order, to the refusal by a private owner to
carry out essential repairs to a 'dwelling-house; and it has
been suggested that this might be the acquisition of the
property by the local authority at its site value, so that it
could be reconditioned by this body and then relet as the
property of the authority. Had this practice been possible in
the Survey area during the past quarter of a century, it is
obvious that many old buildings now completely derelict, or
altogether gone, might have been contributing to-day both
to the beauty of the villages and to reducing the housing
shortage. The condition of many of those that remain is pre-
carious, and action on the lines suggested will be needed in the
near future, if many more of the cottages so characteristic of
this district of England are to be saved from destruction.
As to new housing, not much has been done during the
past thirty years, and it is certain that several hundreds of
houses must be built as soon as possible after the war if the
needs are to be met. In this connexion, it is suggested that it
is not fair to the small local authorities to demand of them a
knowledge of up-to-date opinion on village planning, and
still less of the successful introduction of modern buildings
into old settings particularly if any considerations are
involved which would raise the cost of building beyond that
which is needed for the provision of minimum sanitary re-
quirements. The planning and siting, the choice of materials
and the elevations of new buildings, are matters which call
for the exercise of professional skill of a high order if the
amenities of the villages are to be preserved, while, at the
same time, the well-being and the comfort of the dwellers in
them are to be secured. The local Sanitary authorities are
well equipped technically to ensure good building, and
given the assistance of an authority operating over a far larger
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 255
area, able to command the highest professional services for
planning and design, and empowered to secure at fair values
the sites most desirable for their purposes, some of the appre-
hensions about the future of rural housing might be removed.
If its operations should involve capital expenditure more than
that which could earn a commercial rate of interest in the
form of rent, in order that the best might be provided rather
than the good, this might properly be a charge upon the
national Exchequer, incurred for the maintenance of local
amenities for national enjoyment.
As to the public services, water particularly, and elec-
tricity and sewerage, it has been suggested already that the
time has come when the countryman's right to have them
should be recognized, and that he should be penalized no
longer merely for being a countryman. The difficulty of
serving him, at the present time, is once more the association
of local administration with local finance, and it is suggested
that this alliance should be dissolved. A letter is carried from
Land's End to John o' Groats, or from Westminster to Chelsea,
for the same charge; a railway journey through the flat
Midland plain costs the traveller as much per mile as one over
Shap, with two engines to pull the train. As jthe principles of
average costs and the flat rate have been conceded in so many
of the public services, it would seem that this discrimination
against a section of the community in matters of such im-
portance to its health and comfort as the ordinary household
services can be justified no longer.
At the same time, everything possible must be done to
keep the flat rate chargeable for these services as low as
possible. As to water, it has been pointed out that a common
practice is to provide for the needs of each small community
under its own scheme, administered by the local Sanitary
authority, and these are units which have no necessary
association with the water-bearing strata from which the
supplies are derived. Water-supply, like transport and some
other services, cannot be planned economically on a parochial
basis in the great majority of cases, if the evidence of the
Survey area is any criterion. Water lends itself to transport
3S& SUMMARY AND DIGEST
over long distances fairly cheaply, and thus a national Water
Board, or regional Water Boards, seem to be called for, able
to consider area demands in relation to area supplies and
to inaugurate services on a scale which, though impossible,
often, to the Rural District Council, would be necessary in
the interests of economy and efficiency.
One further point must be made in connexion with rural
water-supplies. The Minister of Health stated recently that
95 per cent, of the population were supplied with piped water.
But what is meant by a 'piped' supply ? The description would
apply to the few villages in the Survey area which have public
water services, but very few of the householders in these
villages can draw water when they want it by turning taps
inside their houses. In one of the villages, justly proud of its
piped water supply, only two houses in five are connected to it.
A public supply to stand-pipes about the village may ensure
pure water and a constant service, but it has no other advan-
tages for the housewife over the well to which she used to
resort, for drawing water involves a journey down the street,
bucket in hand. It should be compulsory on landlords to
connect the houses they own to the water-mains ; until that is
done the countryman will not enjoy the full benefit of the
piped supply, so called, nor will the dependent necessaries of
modern life, sinks, baths, and water-closets, be possible for
him. 1
The problems presented by sewerage and electric supply
are in a different category. The grouping of small com-
munities by regions for sewage disposal could not often be a
feasible proposition, and while electricity, like water, can be
brought fairly cheaply over long distances, the transforma-
tion of current from the high voltage necessary for this
purpose to the low voltage required by the consumer is
expensive. It follows that, for both these services, the cost is
related directly to the concentration of the population to be
served.
The need for treating the countryman as someone entitled
1 These observations were made before the publication of the Govern-
ment's White Paper, A National Water Policy (Cmd. 6515).
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 257
to tne enjoyment of the services and amenities of life such as
are enjoyed by other people has been urged very strongly as
being no more than his due. 'There is no reason why a man
should live under worse conditions than the Milk and Dairies
Order, 1926, prescribes for cows.' 1 At the same time, if
something could be done to increase the density of the rural
population, the cost of supplying him might not affect the
general level of costs to other consumers so much. One of the
larger villages of the Survey area has suffered a decline of
some 800 people, or more than 40 per cent., in the last half-
century, and this is the experience of most of them. If some-
thing could be done in the post-war period to repopulate
the villages, one of the main obstacles to the extension of
services to rural areas would be removed. The problem is a
general one; it arises in nearly every consideration of the
circumstances of country planning, and there will be a return
to it later.
EDUCATION
The smaller villages of England present a problem in
education of some difficulty, and those of the Survey area are
no exceptions. In two of the villages the fall in numbers has
led to the closing of the schools altogether, and the children
are taken daily to other places, some to one and some to
another, according to their ages, for their education. All of
the schools except one are voluntary or non-provided schools
Church schools and the recent White Paper of the Board
of Education has dealt faithfully with them. Their buildings
are all of them antiquated, most are inadequate, and some are
insanitary. The numbers attending them are often too few to
justify the staffing which a primary school needs if sufficient
individual attention is to be given to the different age-groups,
so that from the very start of his training for life the country
child is at a disadvantage.
From the evidence of the Survey area, the non-provided
school seems to gain little, in most places, from its local
managers, and if some acceptable solution could be found of
1 A. G. Street, Country Magazine (broadcast), 23 April 1944.
S
258 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
the problem of denominational teaching, it might be thought
better to bring them all under the sole control of the Local
Education Authority. But while this would solve the diffi-
culty of financing the improvements in accommodation and
equipment of which the schools stand in need, the transfer
would be no remedy for the difficulties of staffing and organiza-
tion. How can the instruction given to twenty-four children
of all ages from 5 to n, by one teacher, or even by two, be
efficient ? How can there be any standard of achievement or
the stimulus of healthy rivalry in classes of three or four
children? On the other hand, it is suggested that it is no
solution to close the smaller schools and to concentrate the
children of several villages in one. While it may make for 3
better standard of education, and even though school meals,
where provided,may be adequate nutritional substitutes for the
family dinner, there are obvious objections to the removal of
little children for long periods from parental control and home
discipline, and to the bus journey in all weathers unescorted
by any responsible person. The smaller schools of the Survey
area have no canteens, notwithstanding that some of them are
deception' schools for the children from other villages.
A good deal may be hoped from the new Education Bill,
now before Parliament, for the improvement of education in
the larger centres of population, but as regards elementary
education, both junior and senior, in rural areas, it can do
little to remove the weaknesses inherent in the smaller schools.
The worst of the school buildings will be reconstructed, no
doubt, either by the managers or by the Local Education
Authority in default, but the staffing difficulty will remain,
with the added drawback, probably, that the little village
schools will come off worse than ever in the post-war com-
petition for teachers. The only alternative apparent is to
close more schools, a remedy as disastrous, in some ways, as
the disease itself.
However, the handicap on the organization of infant and
primary education, which seems inevitable in the smaller
villages, may be mitigated, in some measure, when the pro-
visions of the new Education Bill have been translated into
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 259
action. At present, the examination at n years of age, which
determines whether the child shall proceed to a secondary or
merely to a senior school, operates against the chances of
those who have been educated in some of these little places.
The Bill provides secondary education for all, of various
types, to suit children of different aptitudes, and it will be
possible to change from one type of school to another. Per-
haps a further development could secure, one day, that every
child should spend its last year of full-time education as a
boarder, with all the advantages that should derive from
community life and the growth of personal responsibility,
which are not available, at present, except to the children of a
very small section of the nation.
This better prospect for the country child is developed
again in the Bill, under its proposals for providing further
s part-time education at the new County Colleges. Every-
thing depends, of course, upon the form of the provision
made, which may be for attendance one day a week, or for
two half-days, or for continuous attendance for eight weeks,
or for two periods of four weeks each, in the year. In other
words, the colleges may be residential or non-residential.
There may be two opinions about the advantages of the non-
residential arrangement for urban areas; there can be no
question about the need for residential colleges in rural
districts, if the further education is to be of any real value.
Transport difficulties alone would make it impossible for
most boys and girls in the Survey area to attend the
County Colleges on two half-days weekly, and it would be
the same for a number of the children if the arrangement
were for one full day. Apart from this, the cost of equipping
and staffing the number of colleges required for day pupils,
estimated at twenty-seven in the county of the Survey area
as against four residential colleges, would be heavy. Over-
riding all these considerations, there are the obvious ad-
vantages, educational and social, which should accrue from
periods of continuous study and community life in the
residential colleges. A scheme for the creation of four of
them, each to accommodate about 140 students, has been
260 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
outlined in the Report. Each college would give the same
general cultural education and opportunities for physical and
social activities, whilst having its own special practical bias.
With this choice open to them, the children should be able to
develop, each of them, along the particular lines which
interested them most.
If there is likely to be any general development in other
counties of the Village Colleges which have been so success-
ful in Cambridgeshire, the natural and most advantageous
scheme, it is suggested, would be to incorporate the County
Colleges in them.
THE YOUTH SERVICE
Permissive legislation to promote the organization of
out-of-school activities for boys and girls has been on the
Statute-book for more than twenty years. Nothing had been
done in the county of the Survey area, however, under the
Acts which permitted expenditure on clubs, halls, playing-
fields, &c., and it was not until after the outbreak of the
present war that the Board of Education stimulated Local
Education Authorities to make plans to meet the problems of
youth the social, physical, and recreative welfare of those
between the ages of 14 and 20 years. Before that time,
whatever had been done for young people had been due to
voluntary organization; people with time, a sense of obliga-
tion, and able, some of them, to help with finances, organized
and led the various youth movements.
Investigation in the Survey area has shown that these
organizations, of which the Scouts and Guides are the most
prominent, have had chequered careers. Only in one village,
in which there is a flourishing co-educational secondary
school and the Society of Friends have developed a strong
feeling for social life of all kinds, had youth associations
showed any real vigour and persistence, before the formation
in two other villages of Young Farmers' Clubs and, in the
last year or two, of the pre-service organizations for Army and
Air Force.
In the main, the explanation of the failures disclosed is the
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 261
difficulty of finding leadership. Youth organizations must be
started by someone and they must be led, and in the little
villages of the Survey area leadership of the kind required is
quite fortuitous; it may be forthcoming or it may not. In this
connexion, strong comment has been made in this Report on
the effects on rural social life of the disappearance of the
village schoolmaster from several places. The Consultative
Committee on the Education of the Adolescent, the Hadow
Committee, whose Report to the Board of Education in 1926
was responsible for the grouping of children over 1 1 years of
age in separate Senior Schools, had been concerned only with
education. Neither in its terms of reference nor in its Report
was there any suggestion that account should be taken of the
social consequences of the educational reforms which might
be proposed. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the Com-
mittee itself, or anyone else at that time, would have believed
that such reforms could have injurious repercussions in other
directions in many places, yet that is what has happened. 1
No one, probably, would be prepared to-day to question the
desirability of grouping juniors and seniors in separate schools
providing different types of education, and there seems to be
general agreement amongst Education Authorities that the
dividing line should be drawn at n years of age. In the
smaller communities, the effect of this segregation in practice
was that in many villages the older age-groups were too small
to justify the erection of separate school buildings or even to
support separate teaching staffs ; that in the smallest villages
there were not enough children in either age-group for the
continued maintenance of any kind of school. The removal
of senior age-groups to other places has necessitated the
reduction of the teaching staffs, and where there was a head-
master he has gone. The removal alike of senior and junior
age-groups to other centres has, of course, closed the school
altogether and withdrawn both schoolmaster and school-
mistress from the village.
The consequences, in either case, on social life and leadership
1 One of the clergy in the Survey area remarked that 'the Hadow
Committee has been the ruin of half the villages of England".
*6a SUMMARY AND DIGEST
have been disclosed very plainly in the course of the Sur-
vey; they are one more nail driven in the coffin of the small
community. The dispersal of estates and the departure of the
squire, the union of benefices and the loss of the resident
parson, the removal of the older children and the withdrawal
of the schoolmaster these circumstances are combining in
many places, to-day, to prodyce headless communities.
Leadership had been accorded to these three, indeed it had
been looked for from them, and one or other of them was not
likely to fail. It may well be that, in a democracy, responsi-
bility should be more widely spread, and that the Parish
Meeting or the Parish Council should take the place of the
benevolent autocrat, whether squire, parson, or schoolmaster.
To be successful, however, representative institutions them-
selves must have leaders, and in the smaller villages it is
chance and nothing more whether he or she be forthcoming.
Evidence from the Survey area confirms this. With three
exceptions, all the villages are small, but taking large and small
together, voluntary youth organizations are to be found only
in four of them, and the few young people who belong to
Guides, Scouts, Young Farmers' Clubs, or pre-service units
have to go to one of the larger centres. The Youth Organizer
has drawn attention to the relative success of the pre-service
units, which suggests that every effort should be made to
divert them into peaceful channels after the war, if, at the
same time, the appeal which they now make can be main-
tained.
The provisions of the Education Bill for the further
education and training of the adolescent, if generously inter-
preted and carried into effect, should make their contribution
to the problems of how to develop in young people of both
sexes the sense of personal responsibility and citizenship.
HEALTH SERVICES
The health services available to country dwellers are the
same, in the main, as in urban areas, and differences, where
they exist, are those inseparable from the greater diffusion
of the rural population.
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 263
The Survey area is reasonably provided with the services
of doctors on the panel, although only one is actually resident
within it. He, and several of those in neighbouring places,
have surgeries in various of the villages of the area at which
they attend at stated times. If a patient wants to be visited at
short notice, it is public knowledge in which parish the doctor
is likely to be at a given hour, and, not infrequently, whom he
will be visiting. Thus, there is little difficulty in reaching
him with a message to ask for a call outside his pre-arranged
round.
The proposals of the Government for the improvement of
the Health Services, as expressed in the White Paper, lay
stress on the importance of grouped practices. 1 Partner-
ship groups have developed sporadically about the country
already, though not conspicuously in the Survey area, and
the Ministry of Health contemplates the application of the
principle generally, if further experience of its working
should justify it. Collaboration amongst practitioners is to
be organized in specially designed and equipped premises
'Health Centres' though the idea of group practice with-
out special premises will also be encouraged, and would
be applicable, probably, in districts such as the Survey
area.
The White Paper comments on the need for larger ad-
ministrative areas for the hospital service. That a full
reconsideration of local administrative boundaries is needed
in connexion with some of the health services has been
demonstrated in the Survey area. Indeed, it is a general
problem, which arises in many other matters of local admini-
stration, and the suggestion was made in the course of the
Survey that there should be a complete overhaul of local
government before the reform of the health services and of
other public services is carried out. Otherwise, the country
would be involved in the difficult task of trying to fit the
1 A National Health Service, Cmd. 6502, 1944. The White Paper
issued by the Ministry of Health had not appeared before the field-work
of the Survey had been finished. Its proposals have not been discussed,
therefore, with the medical practitioners and others in the Survey area
who might have been interested in them.
264 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
obsolescent machinery of local government to public services
reorganized regardless of it.
A service, not specifically mentioned in the White Paper,
which seems to call for extensive development, is that of the
social worker. There is a consensus of opinion on the need
for a great increase in the number of trained Hospital Al-
moners and of Health Visitors. The work of the former, in
providing the doctor with the hospital patient's background,
is said to be of first-rate importance both in diagnosis and
treatment. The latter undertake valuable advisory and super-
visory work in the home, particularly in connexion with
schoolchildren. Their work in rural areas is especially
valuable, as attendance as out-patients at the hospitals is
difficult for the country people. The limitations which are
imposed on hospital visits by the infrequency of rail and bus
services were mentioned more than once in the Survey area.
It was suggested, too, that more might be done at the hospitals
to allocate times to patients, and to make appointments for
them which were related to transport time-tables. It might
be mentioned that an almoner at the county infirmary was
said to know the time of departure of the last bus to every
village in the county, and that it was a point of honour with
her to get her patients duly attended and sped on their home-
ward ways.
From the omissions in the White Paper, it might be
inferred that the ultimate object of the Ministry of Health is
to get all health services, both practitioner and hospital, under
the State. There is no support for the Hospital Contributory
Schemes which have done so much for the Voluntary Hospi-
tals, in the Survey area as elsewhere, in recent years; and
although tributes are paid to the help which the Voluntary
Hospitals can give in building up the new system of hospital
services, it is pointed out that their position may be funda-
mentally affected by the acceptance by the community of
responsibility for a service for all.
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
It cannot be said that the various religious organizations
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 265
represented in the Survey area are playing a highly important
part in its social lif^ with the exception of the Society
of Friends. The Free Churches, served as they are almost
everywhere by non-resident ministers, can undertake little
beyond the provision of Sunday duty. The Roman Catholic
Church is hardly represented in the area, but in one village
a young priest from a Jesuit College outside it provides
leadership for a troop of Boy Scouts.
As for the Established Church, the Survey has brought out
two points. The first is that the idea of the parish as the unit
of Church organization has gone. Of twenty parishes in or
touching the area, only four have the full-time services of an
incumbent; the rest are united in pairs, with one case in
which three parishes share a parson. The second is that there
is no foundation for the belief that these small country
parishes are staffed by elderly pastors, who can apply the
experience of years of active service in busy town parishes to
what is no more than part-time work in the country, content
to regard their small stipends as being more in the nature
of pensions. The majority of the clergy in the Survey area
were instituted in youth or in early middle age, and they
have remained where they began.
The experience of the Survey suggests that the time has
come when the Church should consider the reorganization of
the parochial system on a scale more comprehensive and
flexible than is achieved merely by the union of two conti-
guous benefices. Circumstances can be imagined, and places
might even be found, where sudden industrial expansion in
one or both of the parishes has stultified the whole object of
the union. On the other hand, a reconstruction scheme based
on the Rural Deanery, as suggested in the Report, would be
adaptable to any subsequent changes in the balance of popula-
tion. It is not suggested that this is the best or the only
alternative. It must be conceded, however, that an organiza-
tion which has survived virtually unchanged for a thousand
years may be in need of some reconstruction more far-reaching
than that which is possible under the Union of Benefices
Measure.
266 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
ENDOWED CHARITIES
The extent and variety of the endowed charities of the
country, as exemplified by those in the Survey area, may be a
surprise to many, amounting as they do, in the aggregate,
to the value of several hundred pounds in these few parishes.
It is hardly too much to say that many of them can only be
described, picturesque survivals though they may be, as
among the minor abuses of the country-side. A dozen loaves
placed on a shelf in the parish church every Saturday, to be
taken by those who need them, may serve as a wholesome
reminder that someone in the past had a thought for his
poorer neighbours, but it cannot be claimed that the spirit
of his intentions is being fulfilled to-day by the literal obser-
vance of his bequest. Such benefactions serve no useful
purpose in the community as it is now constituted, and their
continued observance, so far from carrying out the purposes
of the trusts, is, in effect, a breach of faith with the dead. The
larger and more valuable charities seem for the most part
to have come under review, and schemes for their reallocation
have been, and are, approved from time to time by the Charity
Commissioners. It is suggested that the time is long overdue
for a national survey of the minor charitable trusts, for the
purpose of bringing them into line with the conditions of
modern life.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
Once again, the importance of leadership, and the difficulty
of finding it in the smaller communities, is emphasized, this
time in the organization of 'social life. An analysis of the
various activities encountered has been made, to distinguish
those which spring from the desires of the people mainly for
entertainment and recreation, and those for benefit and
improvement. In the former category are the dances, whist
drives, and sports clubs; in the latter, the thrift clubs, allot-
ment and garden societies, Women's Institutes, and tutorial
classes.
Apart from leadership, the limiting factors in the provision
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 267
of social organizations are the size of the community and a
suitable meeting place. The difficulties of organizing any-
thing in a community of a couple of hundred or so are obvious,
and the handicap in any village unprovided with a hall of some
kind is also apparent. The schoolroom, which is often the
only place, is a very poor substitute for a hall properly
equipped with stage, kitchen, dressing-rooms, &c.
One of the main problems of social activity in the villages
is how to provide for the younger members. There is a sorry
tale in the Survey area of lapsed troops of Guides and Scouts,
of vanished Girls' Clubs, and of abortive attempts at informal
gatherings for various purposes. It is reported that the
younger women are inclined to fight shy of the Women's
Institute and the Mothers' Union. In fact, apart from dances,
all the most successful institutions derive their support from
the middle aged and elderly of both sexes. 1 Again the pro-
blem confronting the country planner comes back to this
what can be done to give the small community all the
opportunities and amenities of modern life ?
For the men, and the older ones particularly, the garden
and allotment for pleasure and profit, and the village inn for
relaxation and entertainment, are the most important activi-
ties in the villages. Organizations such as Allotment Societies
and Village Produce Associations bring neighbours together,
foster the idea of co-operation through their bulk purchases
of seeds and manures, spread a knowledge of horticulture
through the advisory services of the county staffs which
organized growers can command, and raise the general
standard of performance by means of the shows and com-
petitions which they organize.
As for the village inns, they are the working-men's clubs.
Opinion in the Survey area was unanimous upon the useful
part which most of them play. In fact, one parson declared
that now that the schoolmasters had been taken away from so
1 This generalization seems sharply contradicted by one of the villages,
occupying a middle position in size, in which every kind of social activity
for young and old is manifest in vigorous life. The circumstances, how-
ever, are exceptional, as there is here a flourishing Meeting of the Society
of Friends, who provide leadership.
*68 SUMMARY AND DIGEST
many places, the village publican, if he were the right man,
played the most important part in village life. Licensed
premises often leave much to be desired, and a picturesque
exterior is no substitute for proper accommodation inside.
It was pointed out, however, that the villager who meets his
friends to chat, to play darts, and to drink his pint, in what is
no more than the inn kitchen, eels more at home than he
would amongst the smarter fittings of many of the more
modern houses of call. There is room for improvement, but
the character of the old inn should not be lost.
* Whether the atmosphere of the village inn and all that it
represents could be combined with a general social centre in
the larger villages, is a possibility which country planners
might consider. A centre of this kind, combining the Village
Hall, a canteen for school children and adults, rooms for a
library, for meetings of all kinds, health clinics, adult educa-
tion, and many other purposes, has been discussed, and an
example from a neighbouring county is quoted. Such a centre
might include a bar, and this, indeed, is to be found in one
Village Hall in the Survey area, which some people think is
'the best pub in the village'.
On the other hand, the enterprise of the Cambridgeshire
Education Committee in the organization of its regional
Village Colleges has been quoted as an example of what can
be done to organize the community life in rural areas on a
regional rather than on a parochial basis, the assumption
being that the village unit is too small, generally, to have a full
community life. These colleges have been described briefly
in an earlier section of this Report, and their achievement is
very impressive. There are conspicuous advantages for the
villagers from participation in such an institution, which
provides a meeting-place for clubs and societies of all kinds,
as well as initiating social and cultural activities which are
dependent, in the smaller places, upon the chance of finding
leaders.
A final comment which suggests itself, as arising out of this
Survey of social activities in a rural area, is the absence,
apparently complete, of any attempt at co-ordinated effort by
SUMMARY AND DIGEST 269
the various bodies and organizations, all of them working for
the improvement of the social life of the people. The
Churches, the British Legion, the Women's Institutes, the
Mothers' Union, social clubs of various kinds, and, amongst
the younger people, the Young Farmers' Clubs, the Guides,
Scouts, and the youth organizations all of them are striving
for better conditions of life for various sections of society
without any consultation one with another, pooling of ex-
perience, or the planning of team-work, to prevent overlap-
ping in some places and to supply gaps in others.
Some body such as a Social Council, or a Council of Social
Service, planned on a county or on an area basis, seems to be
needed, consisting of representatives or delegates from all
local social organizations for old and young, which could
substitute concerted action in all matters of mutual concern,
in place of the isolation in which much of the work is carried
on at present. There was evidence in the county of the
Survey area that the Rural Community Council might shortly
give a lead in some development of this kind.
CHAPTER XIV
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?*
THE purposes of country planning, as they emerge from this
Survey, are twofold : to secure the greater efficiency of agri-
culture and land utilization ; to provide conditions of living
and opportunities in life for the countryman as good as those
available to other sections of the community.
As to the first of these, the efficiency of farming and the
proper use of the land, there is little evidence of land hunger
in this country, such as characterizes some of the peasant
countries of Europe. Nor is there any parallel here for the
conditions which led Arthur Young to say, during his travels
in France, that 'the magic of property turns sand into gold*.
In the Survey area, owner-occupiers are not exceptionally
numerous, nor is their performance exceptional; in the
country at large there are few landowners, small or large, who
are not ready to part with their land to their advantage a
fact to which the uncontrolled expansion of the great cities
and towns of the country is due. Indeed, is it not the hope of
almost any landowner that his property may be wanted one
day for development, and is not land often bought, or held,
not so much for its agricultural value nor for reasons of senti-
ment as in the expectation of appreciation ?
It follows that the proposal to establish 'good* agricultural
land as something inviolable, something which must not be
diverted to other uses, 1 is not likely to find much favour
amongst the owners of real property. The proposal involves,
also, the definition of what is 'good* land. Agricultural land
may be good in the sense either that it is fertile or that it is
profitable. Land inherently fertile occurs, for the most part,
in the Fens and in the marshes round the coast, districts in
which any considerable expansion of non-agricultural de-
velopment seems unlikely. Over the greater part of the
country, the difference in the annual agricultural value of one
1 Sec the Report of the Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas,
Cmd. 6378, 1942. (The Scott Report.)
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?' 271
field or another is a matter at the most of a few shillings an
acre. Land which is good because it is profitable is that to
which easy access to markets gives a special value. Often
enough it is land of very ordinary quality, and any industrial
development which absorbs it creates automatically similar
values in the adjoining land. Perhaps the readiest example is
provided by the market gardens and the producer-retailer
dairy farms which are found round most towns of any size.
Country planners, therefore, need not be too much con-
cerned, it would seem, about the selection of land for non-
agricultural uses, granted, of course, that where there are
alternatives the site having the lower agricultural value,
whether due to its inherent quality or to its position, would
be preferred. The redistribution of farms and fields, and the
re-equipment of the land with buildings suitable for the
practice of modern agriculture, the need for which has been
demonstrated by this Survey, stand outside this issue, of
course, and would remain unaffected by it.
It appears, therefore, that agriculture is suffering not so
much from the withdrawal of land from farming, a process
which must be inevitable in a community 90 per cent, of
whom are interested in food production only as consumers,
as from an archaic arrangement of farming units, and an
equipment also often out of date and in bad condition. But
while it must be conceded that the non-agricultural majority
of the people must have access to the land it needs, this is not
to say that the uncontrolled application of this principle,
which has been responsible for the over-expansion of many
towns and the suburban sprawl, can be allowed to continue.
On the other hand, it is clear that some degree of concentra-
tion is needed if the people are to enjoy all the public services
and material opportunities which the evolution of knowledge
and of a sense of social responsibility has put at their disposal.
Planning, so far as there has been any, seems to have been
almost entirely on the regional basis, without regard to the
broader issues which it may involve, each town-planning
scheme being complete in itself and having no necessary
relationship to its neighbours. If the growth of towns is to
27* 'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?'
be controlled by the deliberate decentralization of industry,
as has been recommended, 1 something more flexible will be
needed than the system of regional planning. Is it not
possible that, with a larger conception of the planning
problem, a combined solution might be found, to include both
the relief of the congestion of industrial areas and the im-
provement of conditions of life and labour in many country
districts, the need for which has been disclosed in the area
covered by this Survey ?
Its evidence illuminates the difficulties of all the little
villages, each of a few hundred people, which are dotted over
the country-side at intervals of a few miles, most of them
living in complete economic and social isolation one from
another, for the great growth of the population in the last
hundred years has affected rural England only here and there.
Or it would be more correct, perhaps, to say that it has
affected the greater part of rural England adversely, by draw-
ing from it not only the normal increase in population which
could not be absorbed in agriculture, but also all the trades-
men and workers in rural industry, who served the farming
community before the days of mechanization of manual pro-
cesses and mass production of goods. The populations of the
villages in the Survey area have dropped by 25 per cent, in
the last two generations, and in some of the remoter parts of
the country the decline has been twice as much.
The problem of the declining country-side is no new one,
and it is generally recognized. Most of the discussions of it
centre round agriculture the neglect of agriculture by the
nation has caused a drift from the land; the revival of village
life depends upon the revival of agriculture. So runs the
argument, but this cannot be the whole story, and there is
evidence from the Survey that neither the cause nor the
remedy suggested will stand close examination. In this
country, for better or worse, a standard of living has been
established for the great bulk of the people, which agriculture,
organized as at present, cannot offer; the value of the farm-
1 See Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial
Population, Cmd. 6153, 1940. (The Barlow Report.)
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?' 273
worker's product in the past has not been sufficient to earn
him a standard comparable to that of the industrial worker.
There are only two ways in which the difference can be
adjusted : the first, by changes in labour organization on the
farm which will increase the worker's output; the second, by
State subsidies to farm labour, direct or indirect. The
former would reduce, rather than increase, the number of
workers needed on the land; 1 the latter could do no more
than stabilize it at its present figure.
Even if some means could be devised for putting men on
the land in greater numbers, it must not be supposed that
country society would thereby be satisfactorily reconstituted.
Any village to-day, not affected by the pull of industrialism,
is proportionately more agricultural, probably, than it has
ever been in modern times. What is needed is not so much an
increase in the number of land-workers in the villages as the
restoration to them of the industrial element in their popula-
tions, of which they have been deprived by the march of
progress.
Clearly, this better balance in the rural population cannot
be achieved by attempting to restore the old country indus-
tries, either agricultural or general, of last century. Such
blacksmiths as have survived, who are prepared to convert
their shoeing businesses into machinery repair shops, have got
great opportunities, but most of the agricultural industries
have been absorbed into larger organizations, able to offer
higher standards of living to the workers and cheaper goods
and services to the farmers. Changes in farming practice,
too wire-netting and stakes instead of hurdles, or the
electric fence instead of either; enamelled iron for all the
wooden dairy utensils have put certain craftsmen out of
business altogether. Nor are the non-agricultural industries
once scattered about the country capable of revival. It is
inconceivable, for example, that the picturesque plush
1 Much of the decline in the number of agricultural workers in the last
twenty years, which has attracted so much comment, is due to the steady
increase in manual efficiency by the general spread of the use of farm
machinery.
T
*74 'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? 4
industry in the Survey area, now practically dead, can ever be
revived on the hand-loom basis; and the other industries,
such as milling, malting, tanning, and so on, now centralized,
are likely to remain so. What, then, can be done to increase
the size of many of the village communities and to make
them more representative of the nation's many interests ?
There is evidence of a certain reluctance on the part of
many country lovers to contemplate any serious change in the
rural scene. But it is sufficient to look at any village street to
realize that there has been a continuous evolution and change
through the centuries, not only in the village but in the
face of the country-side too. A static village is dead, and
the 'preservation of rural England* must not be interpreted
in the museum sense.
The village of a few hundred people cannot survive as a
healthy organism. All the evidence of the Survey points in
this direction. It cannot maintain any of the social services ;
it must send its senior, and sometimes all, its children away
for their schooling; it must share the services of a district
nurse; it cannot bear the overhead costs of water-supplies,
sewerage, or electric light; it has few shopping facilities; it
cannot support the usual recreational organizations, cricket
and football clubs, Women's Institutes, Young Farmers'
Clubs, Guides and Scouts, and so on, solely because there are
not enough men, women, and children of the various age-
groups to run them; it cannot give a living or a life to a
resident parson or Free Church minister.
The question at once arises, What is the minimum size for
a healthy rural community ? An ingenious proposal recently
put forward would regard the school as the most important
social unit, and, treating education as the primary communal
service, would take the population needed to maintain it in
efficient operation as being the minimum. Taking 25 to 30
children as a reasonable number to form a class, and calculat-
ing that one-sixtieth of the population is in each one-year
age-group (on an average), the school with 25 to 30 children
in each class represents a total population of from 1,500 to
i, 800 people. With a range of from 20 to 40 in a class, the
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? 1 375
corresponding range of population is from 1,200 to 2,400**
It is of interest to note that the three larger villages of the
Survey area approximate to the lower of these figures, and
they confirm in many ways that this population can support
a vigorous community life. The question of an upper limit is
not likely to arise in rural areas, except in the planning of
brand-new towns. How will it be possible to build up the
little villages to anything like these figures ?
The answer is, of course, that it will not be possible for all
of them, but much has been going on for some years in an
uncontrolled way in many of them, which, with proper
regulation and deliberate planning, might raise their popula-
tions to this better social level. The Royal Commission
quoted above was emphatic on the need for the decentraliza-
tion of industry. Factories and workpeople, removed from
the towns, were to be rebuilt and rehoused either in some of
the smaller country towns or in new towns built specially to
accommodate them. 2 By a slight modification of this principle,
town and country might be even more successfully wedded,
and recent developments in the Survey area suggest the
method.
Outside the market town serving the area, about one mile
to the north of it, a factory was built about twelve years
ago, equipped for one of the light industries. No provision
was made for importing and housing labour, the management
relying, apparently, on being able to attract the men and
1 See C. B. Fawcett, A Residential Unit for Town and Country Planning,
University of London Press, 1944.
2 The proposal to build new towns is the less acceptable part of this
recommendation of the Barlow Report. Industrially and socially, it seems
open to the objection that no community can be well found which is
dependent upon one industry. Trade depressions, of course, would affect
everybody temporarily, but these would pass, and what is more serious
would be the artificiality of the town made suddenly and all in one piece,
with no roots in the past and no traditions, instead of having grown up
like a living thing. This is no mere sentiment, for the growth of the com-
munity sense and civic consciousness would be stunted by the utter
dependence upon one activity for all, without the stimulus of the great
variety of life to be found in any old community. All trades, occupations,
interests, and periods have contributed to make up the corporate life of
English towns and villages.
276 'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?'
women it needed from local sources. Events seem to have
justified the expectation, and most villages in the Survey
area, for example, send a labour quota daily to the town and
factory. The accompanying map shows how each has been
Distribution through the Surveq Atx<x of
Residents going, to vrork In the Market Tow
affected; one of the nearest and largest, under the stimulus of
a war-time expansion in the factory, is now sending more
than a hundred. Transport and housing facilities have been
the factors determining the response to the demand, the
former being helped by works buses, but nothing has been
done, so far, to meet the demand for housing.
Many examples of unregulated industrial development on
similar lines can be found in other country districts. A factory
industry is planted down on the outskirts of a small country
town, wages better than those of agriculture are offered, and
often work for women as well as for men. The management
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?' 377
relies upon these attractions to divert labour into the factory,
and if the volume needed should increase beyond the capacity
of the locality to house it, they know that private enterprise or
the local authority will step in and build. What usually
happens is industrial development in its most undesirable
forms. The town in which the factory is located hastens to
take advantage of the opportunity to expand, and industrial
housing estates are developed. The efforts of private enter-
prise, manifested generally in the country villages within
transport distance of the factory, provide some of the worst
examples of uncontrolled, unplanned, speculative building
bungalows and ribbon development and neither the houses
nor their occupiers are assimilated in any way to the com-
munities which they adjoin. They are the justification of
those who would seek to preserve the country-side inviolate
from the encroachments of industry.
The evidence of the Survey is that every activity, economic
and social, within its area, every condition of living, is less
effective than it might be, owing to the smallness of the com-
munities in it, while some activities essential to a full and
healthy life are entirely absent; further, that the decline of
rural industries and of the village tradesmen has left an im-
poverished and ill-balanced society in most places. It is
suggested that if the siting of new or of decentralized indus-
tries were to be planned deliberately, by a public department
in close collaboration with those responsible for the respective
industries, it should be possible to place many of them in
rural districts under conditions which would give them all
that they could have in towns already over-congested and
more, while avoiding, at the same time, the more obvious
mistakes of unplanned commercial enterprise. For many of
the lighter industries proximity to the sources of raw materials
is unnecessary, given adequate transport and communica-
tions. These conditions satisfied, the only other essential is
a reasonable prospect of securing the necessary labour.
It is here, it is suggested, that so much might be done by
conscious and deliberate planning, not only to remove the
reproach of so many of the dormitory towns and villages
*?8 'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?'
which have come into being between the two wars, but to
revitalize many of the decaying villages and to bring a new
spirit into the English country-side. Just as the siting of in-
dustries would follow upon consultation between public
authority and private enterprise, so the siting of housing for
the workers in the industries would follow upon consultation
between the management and the local housing authority.
Dismissing the idea of new industrial towns built round the
factories as being anti-social and artificial, the alternative
would be to repopulate all the little villages within a certain
radius of the factory first, by reconditioning the old houses
capable of being brought up to modern standards; then, by
the occupation of vacant sites within the villages such as
could be built upon without crowding ; and lastly, by planning
the land immediately round the village in a way such that the
village might remain a village rather than become a minor
edition of an old town and its modern suburbs. In this way,
there would be the maximum of economy and of convenience
economy in linking up the new buildings to existing public
services or in the provision of these services alike for old and
new; convenience of access to shops, schools, places of
worship, and so on, for the new-comers. Above all, there
would be no segregation of the factory workers in a housing
estate. The villages, though larger, would remain mixed
communities of many interests and of all classes, for housing
must make provision not only for the workers but also for the
management. There should be a reasonable hope that there
would be some fusion, in due course, between old and new
for the ordering of social life and matters of mutual concern,
a process which would be facilitated by the recruitment,
which would certainly follow, of some part of the factory
labour from amongst the original inhabitants. 1 Moreover,
the new opportunity for employment which the factory would
offer in thfe locality, would keep the young people in the
1 Many of the new housing estates, whether for slum clearance or for
industrial development, fail deplorably in these matters. They are charac-
terized by complete class segregation, and, while they are not real villages
or towns in themselves, they are remote from the facilities of the one to
which they have to look.
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?' 279
villages and would arrest the exodus of good country folk
which has been so generally deplored.
The belief expressed by the Committee on Land Utilization
in Rural Areas that the location of factories in rural areas
would withdraw essential labour from the land seems to be
untenable, for though it has been the common complaint of
farmers that industrial enterprises deprive them of farm
workers, the reason is purely economic, and farming will
suffer in this way wherever factory industries are located,
unless it can offer wages and conditions of employment
which are equally attractive. This is one of the reasons for
suggesting the reassembly of farms in the Survey area in
larger units, better arranged and equipped for economic
working. Once more, too, it must be stressed that farming
alone cannot absorb the natural increase of the agricultural
population. Three out of every four boys born on the land
must seek other employment, and would it not be better if it
could be found in their own neighbourhood and amongst
their own friends?
Attention should be drawn to the good which would be
likely to result to farming and to agricultural employment
from the decentralization of industry and the repopulation of
the villages after the manner suggested here. It is the fresh
and perishable farm products of which the population of this
country stand most in need if its dietary is to be improved.
It is these products dairy products of all kinds, fresh meat,
eggs and poultry, fresh vegetables and fruit that this
country is fitted by soil and climate to produce in great
abundance and in highest quality. It is these same products,
again, which give the greatest volume of employment and the
highest returns on the labour employed. It is on the dairy
farms, the market-gardens, the poultry farms, and the fruit
plantations that production is at its intensest and that em-
ployment and wages are at their highest, and the times are
ripe for a great expansion in these types of farming. The
most important limiting factor, hitherto, has been access to
markets. Transport of perishable produce over long distances
is expensive; it must be rapid, and special containers must be
280 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?'
provided for certain products. Notwithstanding all that has
been done, perishables cannot now be marketed beyond
certain distances without loss of condition, nor at costs which
will put them within the reach of those who need them most.
It is hardly necessary to point out the immediate opportu-
nities for a general expansion in these types of production
which the resiting of industry and the diffusion of the in-
dustrial population would offer. Farmers and farm workers
in many districts, who are restricted, now, to extensive
systems of husbandry, based on corn production in competi-
tion with the cheap producers of all the world, would find
themselves on the threshold of a new era of opportunity and
advancement as the market in more profitable products, pro-
tected naturally, many of them, by their perishability,
opened up around them.
Planning of the villages within the radius prescribed around
the factory would take account of their respective sizes, the
object being to bring each up to the minimum necessary for
a full social life. This would not mean filling the country-side
with villages all of the same size a drab prospect. The
smaller ones, though enlarged, would remain the smaller
ones, while the larger ones, even though socially big enough
already, could be enlarged to any desirable extent, always
provided that their corporate character were not lost. The
top and bottom limits suggested by Professor Fawcett range
from about 2,500 downwards to about 1,200.
Lovers of the beauty of the English village need have no
apprehensions from these proposals. The charm of most
villages is derived from the variety of building which succeed-
ing generations have contributed, and this is true even in
districts such as the Survey area, which has a very character-
istic style of its own. On the other hand, the model villages
built by the improving landlords of the nineteenth century,
however good the houses may be in themselves, fail in that
they lack any suggestion of continuous growth and old-
established community life. Unless the confessed object of
country planners be to stop further growth and to preserve the
English village as a memorial of the past, it is not only desi-
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? 1 281
rable, it is necessary, also, that this generation should make its
contribution of new buildings. Why should any particular
period in village history be chosen for mummification ?
Nor need this detract in any way from the amenity of the
village. A pair of farm- workers' cottages just completed in
one of the villages of the Survey area (No. 7) introduces design
and materials each entirely new to the district. At the same
time both are good, they harmonize well with their sur-
roundings, and when weathering has toned down their first
newness there is no doubt that they will add a fresh interest
to the village.
Villages thus enlarged by the influx of industry should find
themselves emancipated from most of the disabilities from
which small rural communities, such as those of the Survey
area, are suffering to-day. On the other hand, the remedy
suggested cannot be universally applied, and in regions in
which village communities must remain too small to provide
a full social and cultural life under any likely circumstances,
the Cambridgeshire Village Colleges suggest the way out.
Indeed, it is possible that the decentralization of industry, and
the repopulating of villages in connexion with it, should go
hand in hand, also, with the regional development of Village
Colleges, if those now living restricted and isolated lives are
to be able to take their part in a fuller community life.
The foregoing observations and suggestions have arisen
from a study of the conditions of country life disclosed in this
pilot Survey. To the extent that similar conditions prevail in
other parts of the country, these observations may have a
more general application, but in districts in which the condi-
tions differ some modifications would be necessary. What-
ever qualifications might be called for, however, there seems
to be one factor common to all districts, which is likely to be
of overriding importance in every attempt at planning or
reconstruction. This is the factor of finance.
The reassembly of farms in larger and better planned
units, and their re-equipment with buildings suited to
modern farm practice, is a financial problem of the first
282 'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?'
magnitude. It has been argued at some length in the last
chapter, with the suggestion that the solution must be sought
on a national basis.
For the provision of many of the public services the State
makes a distinction between town and country. The diffusion
of a small population over a wide area raises, inevitably, the
cost of supply in such areas, and until the whole nation is
made the unit of demand, the countryman will always be
penalized. It is immaterial whether a particular service be in
the hands of a corporation trading for profit, of a public
utility company, or of the local government authority; the
service may be lacking altogether, or, if offered, it is on terms
which are relatively disadvantageous to the country dweller.
Certain public services supplied by local authorities are
subsidized by the State, but this only aggravates the distinc-
tion between town and country, for the Exchequer contribu-
tions for many purposes are proportionate to the expenditure
of the local authorities, and this, of course, is determined by
the rateable values upon which their incomes depend. It
follows that the wealthier administrative districts, the in-
dustrial centres, get the largest grants, and the places that
need most help, the rural districts, get least.
It will never be possible to remove the handicaps under
which country people live and work, so long as the supply of
many of the essential services, from education to sewerage, is
dependent upon the present methods of finance. It is
suggested that the time has come when this principle, which
segregates communities into those which can have these
services and can have them good and cheap, from those who
must go without them or have them less efficient and ex-
pensive, should be reconsidered. The occasion is opportune,
for great social changes are implicit in the widening of the
basis of income-tax payment. Farmers are now assessed to
income tax, surtax, and excess profits tax, for the first time,
on the principles applied to other business men; rural and
industrial wage-earners alike are now income-tax payers.
This great change, which makes everyone a direct contributor
to the national Exchequer according to his ability to pay,
'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?* 283
regardless of his way of life or place of residence, would seem
to impose the obligation on the State of securing a similar
equality in the supply of services and amenities available to
him. The principle of the flat rate, applied without question
in assessing the cost to the individual of some of the more
important of the public services, the postal service for
example, might now be extended to cover all the main
services.
Important changes in the present relations of national and
local finance would be involved. More services might follow
the local Fire Services and come under central administra-
tion; private undertakings might have to be converted into
public utilities; and there might have to be large federations
of enterprises regionally, for example, for water-supply, and
nationally, for example, for light and power. At the same time,
the advantages which are claimed for the local administration
of some if not all of the public services need not be lost,
for when the future of local government has been settled,
there should be no reason, it may be suggested, why the
County Councils, District Councils, and Parish Councils
should not continue to play their parts, even more effectively
than at present, in the administration of education, the
control and supply of housing, and in many other matters in
which local knowledge and voluntary public service could be
mobilized in association with national finance.
These questions, however, are outside the scope of this
Survey, the object of which has been to find out the conditions
under which the countryman lives and labours to-day in one
small district of rural England, in order to provide some
indication of the problems which country planning, every-
where, has got to face and to solve. The emphasis in this
Report may seem to be rather on the material things, but it
has been recognized that there are other values. In most parts
of rural England, as typified by the Survey area, however,
planning and reconstruction have a long way to go before
the life of the countryman, either on its material or on
its cultural sides, is likely to approach the fullness of
contentment.
INDEX
Acts of Parliament : Education Act,
1921,162; Education Bill, 1943,
145, 152, 157, 159, 161, 210, 250,
258-60, 262; Housing of Work-
ing Classes Act, 1890, 116;
Housing, Town Planning, &c.
Act, 1919 (Addison Act),, 116;
Housing (Rural Workers) Acts,
1926-42, 117, 123; Housing
Act, 1936, H7, 126; Housing
Act, 1938, 118; Local Govern-
ment Acts, 1888-1933, 89, 98,
236, 250; Physical Training and
Playing Fields Act, 193?, 162;
Poor Law Amendment Act,
1832, 204.
Adolescent, the, 2, 166-8; Con-
sultative Committee on the Edu-
cation of, 1926 (Hadow Com-
mittee), effects of, 164-6, 261-2.
See also Youth Service.
Agricultural Workers, National
Union of, 227, 245.
Agriculture: economic conditions
of, 56, 271; employment in, 2,
15, 18, 28, 109, 238-41, 272-3,
279. See also Farming.
Air Training Corps, 164, 170, 171,
260, 262.
Amenities, preservation of, 8, 138,
139, 253, 280.
Army Cadet Force, 164, 170, 171,
260, 262.
Barlow Report, see Population.
Baylis, George, 29.
Blacksmiths, 12, 85, 86-7, 273.
Blind, the, 182-3.
Brewing, 87-8.
British Legion, 222, 269.
Budgets, family, 18-22.
Bus Services : school ,151, 153,1 64,
1 66, 264; in Survey area, 13, 24.
Cambridgeshire Village Colleges,
160^2, 236, 260, 268, 281.
Charities, endowed, 4, 51, 91, 204;
future of, 209-11, 266; in the
Survey area, 205-9.
Child Guidance Clinics, 153.
Child welfare, see Maternity and
child welfare.
Church of England, 188-201, 265;
church attendance, 189-91 ; cler-
gy, 191-2; parochial system,
break up of, 193-7, suggestions
for reorganization of, 197-201,
265; schools, 141-3.
Clergy, 191-2, 196-201, 215, 262,
265.
Climate of the Survey area, 12.
Co-operative Society, 24.
Corn Laws, repeal of, 3, 4.
Corn production: mechanized, 58-
9, 6 1 ; in Survey area, 27, 28, 58.
Cottages: characteristics of, 109,
1 1 2-1 6; demolition orders, 126-
7; Farm workers', 102, 117, 118,
281; reconditioning of, 122-5;
tied, 63-6, 245. See also Housing.
County Colleges, 159-62, 259-60.
County Councils, see Local Govern-
ment.
County War Agricultural Execu-
tive Committee, i, 47.
Diseases, infectious, 182.
Education, 2, 9, 140-62, 257-60;
adult, 154, 161, 162; difficulties
of country school, 150-3; health,
183; part-time, 159-62; recon-
struction, 157-62,258-60; tech-
nical, 155; youth, 168-70. See
also Schools.
Electricity, 2, 7, 98, 251, 256; in
cottages, 113, 136; on farms, 42,
54; in schools, 145; in villages,
122, 136.
Employment: in Survey area, 15;
opportunities for in country, 2-3.
Entertainment, organizations for,
219-21, 266.
Farm Buildings: electricity for, 54;
in relation to farm layout, 34-5 ;
position of, 40, 53, 61-2, 74; re-
construction of, 62-3 ; in Survey
286
INDEX
area, 29, 30, 243-4; water-sup-
plies to, 53.
Farmer, Samuel, 29.
Fanners: in nineteenth century, 4;
on replanned farms, 75-^6; stand-
ard of living of, 240-1 ; in Survey
area, 15, 17; in times of depres-
sion, 56-7.
Farm Houses: built in nineteenth
century, 5; electricity for, 54;
position of, 46, 62; water sup-
plies to, 53-
Farming: depression of, 7, 28;
effects of mechanization of, 238-
41 ; equipment of, 242-5 ; evolu-
tion of, 3-7 ; Golden Age of, 5 ;
reconstruction of, 246-8, 271,
278-9; in Survey area, 25; types
of, 27-31, 54.
Farms : equipment of in nineteenth
century, 5, 6; layout of, 33~43
46; readjustment of boundaries
of, 47, 52; examples of replanned
67-84, 246; replanning of, 54-
57; sizes and shapes of, 31-3, 60,
82-3, 242-3; and soils, 43-4, 47,
60, 83 ; structure of, 3 1-43 ; water
supplies on, 53-4. See also Lay-
out, Farm.
Farm workers, 3; conditions of
employment, 6, 245; pre-war
conditions of, 58; on replanned
farms, 59, 63-6, 76; standard
of living of, 18-22, 240-1; in
Survey area, 15, 17.
Fawcett, C. B., 275 /., 280.
Fields: sizes and shapes of, 44-5,
61, 243 ; water-supplies to, 53-4.
Free Churches, 189, 190, 201-3,
265.
Friendly Societies, 226.
Friends, Society of, 189, 203, 260,
265, 267.
Gas, 2, 7, 122.
Grassland, 29, 30; temporary leys,
59, 61.
Guides, Girl, 163, 170, 171, 260,
262, 267, 269.
Hadow Report, see Adolescent, the.
Health Services, 177-87, 250, 252,
262-4; Health Visitors, 179, 184,
264; in schools, 149-50, 180-1;
White Paper on, 1944, 250, 263.
Higgs, Clyde, 63.
Hosier, A. J., 29, 59.
Hospitals, 177, 178, 182, 185-7,
263-4; Almoners, 264; contri-
butory schemes, 185-6, 264.
Housing : Acts of Parliament affect-
ting, 1 1 6-1 8; categories of, 112-
18; of farm workers, 63-6, 102,
1 17, 1 1 8, 281 ; in nineteenth cen-
tury, 4-5 ; of old age pensioners,
210-11; present conditions, i,
108-18; post-war period, 134-9,
253-5, 277; reconditioning and
improvement, 122-34, 254; re-
sponsibility of RJXC. for, 1 1 6-
22, 126, 127; siting of, ui-12,
136-8; slum property, na.-i6;
style of, no; uncontrolled de-
velopment of, 276-7.
Inclosure of Open Fields and
Commons, 4, 25, 32, 45, 46, 1 10,
204, 248.
Industry : agricultural, 85-7 ; decen-
tralization of, 275-81; effect on
housing, in, 135; non-agri-
cultural, 87-8; rural, 3, 237, 272-
4; in Survey area, 12, 85-8;
woodland, 3, 85.
Ironstone mining, 12, 17, 87.
Land utilization, 270-2 ; Report of
Committee on, 1942 (Scott
Report), 270, 279-
Landlords: in nineteenth century,
4, 5, 280; and replanning, 76-80,
246, 270; types of, in Survey
area, 47-53, no.
Layout, farm: convenient, 34; ex-
amples of efficient, 67-84; of
farms, 33-40, 46, 243; inconve-
nient, 36-8 ; with poor access, 35 ;
replanning of, 54-67; in relation
to roads, 40; scattered, 39, 40,
41; in relation to soil, 43-4;
summary of, 42-3 ; in relation to
water-supply, 54.
Leadership, 163-6, 215-17, 261-2,
266.
Libraries, County, 91, 155-7, 161.
INDEX
Limestone quarrying, 87.
Local government, 89-107, 249-
53 ; Acts of Parliament, 89, 98,
236, 250; conclusions, 105-7;
finance, 92, 96-8, 102, 106,
251-3, 281-3; methods of
election, 94-5, 103-4; recon-
struction of, 250-3, 263, 283.
County Councils, 89, 90, 98, 104,
105, 251 ; as Education author-
ity, 141, 142, 146, 151, 157,
158, 162, i 69, 250, 260; as
health authority, 177.
Parish Councils, 89, 90; func-
tions of, 91-2; future of, 251 ;
personnel of, 96; in Survey
area, 94-5.
Parish Meetings, 89, 90; and
endowed charities, 207-9 ;
functions of, 91-2; in Survey
area, 92-4.
Rural District Councils, 89, 90,
95-8; future of, 100-4, 250;
responsibility for housing and
services, 116-22, 126, 127,
256.
Machinery, farm, 58, 59, 61, 75,
239, 240.
Market towns, 11, 12.
Maternity and child welfare, 177-
8 1 ; ante-natal care, 177 ; confine-
ments, 178; Infant welfare
centres, 178-9; vaccination, 180.
Mental deficiency, 183.
Milk production: in Survey area,
30, 244; by travelling bail, 59,
61.
Mills, 3, 12, 85, 274-
Morris, Henry, 161.
Mothers* Union, 215, 218, 222,
224-5, 267, 269.
National Council of Social Service,
9 1 ./ft., 232; loans to black-
smiths, 86.
National Fanners' Union, 227.
Nursing Services, 177; associa-
tions, 184-5, 218, 222; mid-
wives, 178.
Owner-occupiers, 50, 51, 77, 270.
Parish Council, see Local govern-
ment.
Parish Magazine, 192-3.
Parish Meeting, see Local govern-
ment.
Parochial Church Council, 193.
Parsonage houses, 192, 198, 234.
Planning, country, i ; of farms, 54-
67; principles of, 9, 136-9, 270-
83; problems of, 7-8, 126, 237.
Plush Industry, 88, 273.
Population : balance of, 272-5 ; de-
cline of (graph), 16; Report of
Royal Commission on the Distri-
bution of Industrial, 1940 (Bar-
low Report), 272, 275 ; of Survey
area, 13-18, 238, 241.
Produce associations, 227-8, 267.
Prout, John, 29.
Public Assistance, 98-100, 252.
Public houses, 228-31, 267-8.
Public Services, 2, 4, no, 136, 245,
271 ; future of, 282-3; responsi-
bility of Rural District Council
and Parish Council for, 96-8, in
Survey area, 118-22. See Elec-
tricity, Gas, Health Services,
Water-supplies, &c.
Railway, in the Survey area, 13,
Rates, 92, 96, 97, 98, 102, 106, 251,
282.
Reconstruction, see Planning.
Roads: farm, 35, 36; farm layout in
relation to, 40; in the Survey
area, 12-13.
Roman Catholic Church, 189, 203,
265.
Roofs, 109, 113, 116, 118, 123-4,
128. See also Thatch, Thatchers.
Rural Community Council, 86,
269.
Rural District Council, see Local
government.
Rural Industries Committee, 86.
See also Industries.
Saddlers, 3, 85.
Sanitation, 2, 7, 113, 116, 125, 145.
Scavenging, 2, 97 122.
Schools, 2; elementary, 141-53;
endowed, 154; managers, 141-2;
288
INDEX
medical services, 149-50, 180,
181; secondary, 153-4, 259;
sites and buildings, 143-5, 257;
in the Survey area, 140.
Schoolteachers, 147-9, 164-6, 215-
16, 258, 261-2.
Scott Report, see Land utilization.
Scouts, Boy, 163, 170, 171, 260,
262, 267, 269.
Sewage disposal, 2, 91, 96, 97, 113,
116, 120, 121, 136, 251, 256.
Shoe makers, 3, 85.
Shopping facilities in Survey area,
23-4.
Slate and Thrift Clubs, 222, 225-6,
230, 266.
Smallholders: provision for in re-
construction, 70, 247-8; stand-
ard of living of, 18-22; in Survey
area, 32.
Social centres, 231, 232-6, 268.
Social life: activities and organiza-
tions, 212-36, 266-9; in nine-
teenth century, 3-4.
Soils, 12; in relation to farms, 43-4,
47, 60; of the Survey area, 12,
25-7-
Sports Clubs, 216, 221, 222, 266.
Standards of living, 18-22, 240-1.
Survey Area : communications and
transport in, 12-13; education
in, 140-57; endowed charities
in, 204-9; farming land of, 25-7,
57; health services in, 177-87;
housing in, 109-18; local
government in, 92-8; occupa-
tions in, 15, 18; population of,
13-18, 238; public services in,
118-22; religious organizations
in, 188-203; standards of living
in, 18-22; shopping facilities in,
23-4; selection of, 9-10, 238;
social activities in, 212-36 ; topo-
graphy of, 10-12; types of farm-
ing in, 27-31 ; youth services in,
163-76.
Thatch, 109, 113.
Thatchers, 85, 123, 128.
Trade Unions, 4, 227.
Transport, 12-13, 187, 242, 259,
' 264, 276. See also Railway,
Roads, Bus Services.
Tuberculosis, 181.
Union of Benefices Measure, 194-
7. 265.
Village Colleges, see Cambridge-
shire Village Colleges.
Village halls, 91, 215, 218, 231-2,
233, 235, 267, 268.
Villages, 7 ; repopulation of, 277-9 ;
size of, 274-5; i n tne Survey
area, n, 109-12, 212-14; water-
supplies in, 118-20, 136.
Water-supplies, i, 2, 7, 9, 91, 96-8,
251, 252, 255-6, 283; on farms,
29-30, 35, 42, 52, 53-4, 244; in
cottages, 113, 1 1 6, 125, 136,
245; in schools, 145; in villages,
118-20, 136.
Wheelwrights, 3, 85-6.
Women's Institutes, 217, 220, 222-
4, 233, 266, 267, 269.
Workers' Educational Association,
154, 170, 233.
Young, Arthur, 25, 28, 270.
Young Farmers' Clubs, 163, 174,
175, 260, 262, 269.
Youth Services, 162-76, 260-2;
adolescents, 166-8; education,
168-70; leadership, 163-6; mor-
al welfare, 175-6; organizations,
170-5.
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