English villagers have difficulties

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33060, 30 October 1972, Page 7

English villagers have difficulties

(From

SIBYL M. WOODS)

LONDON,

Recently in our Cotswold village a stone cottage came up for sale. It was in bad repair, had two small rooms downstairs, and an upstairs bedroom, an outside lavatory, and no hot running water. It sold for about $NZ23,200.

A three-bedroomed house with modernised plumbing—even if it is several hundred years old —will often fetch prices as high as £lB,OOO to £20,000. This is in a small village with a totally inadequate bus service, no store or post office (although there are both in Chipping Campden, a walk of one mile), and six from the nearest railway.

These prices can be matched in any one of the hundreds of attractive villages which lie within a hundred miles of London or other big cities. The- city-dweller is desperate to escape from the noise, fumes, and crowds of the metropolis to the peace and quiet of the country for as long as possible at the weekends. So the more affluent compete with each other for every cottage — no matter how ancient or dilapidated—which gives him a foothold in the country. The poorer city-dweller buys a fishing-licence which gives him the right to fish on some short stretch of river within range of his city. This is not fishing as we in New Zealand know it. In our area the Avon is divided up into sections allotted to various fishing clubs whose members come mainly from the tightly-packed in-

dustrial slums of Birmingham. We talked to the secretary of one of these clubs who was anxiously wandering how he could squeeze his 300 members into their stretch of the river Avon where it flows through the village of Fladbury. They would have to be less than one yard apart and on either side of them would be other clubs equally restricted. Here—whatever the weather —they will sit all day catching little tiddlers (i.e., the undersized roach and perch which are much too small to eat).

These are put into buckets of water and at the end of the day each fisherman’s catch is counted and weighed and the winner collects his prize. Then all the fish are put back into the river ready to be caught again the next day or the next week-end. Most of the fish have mouths heavily scarred from the wounds of frequent em counters with anglers’ hooks. Every Sunday morning at 7.40 a.m., my husband and I cross over the Avon on the narrow 13th Century packhorse bridge at Bidford-on Avon on our way to services in Barnsley Hall Psychiatric Hospital, Bromsgrove. Already at that early hour, on cold, frequently foggy or wet mornings, the fishermen are there, crouched on their folding-stools under their umbrellas, vacuum flasks by their sides. Some are so keen that they stay out all night under their umbrellas, warming themselves at little fires they build. This is some measure of their desperate need to “get away from it all” and find peace and sapity beside the still-flowing riwer. YOUNG PEOPLE But what about the villagers themselves —those whose families have lived in these villages for generations? How do their young people fare when they grow up and want to marry and find a house of their own? The inflationary prices caused by the influx of city week-enders puts the purchase of houses well beyond their reach, and there are fewer and fewer council houses for them.

Some of the professionalclass week-enders have been known to organise successful petitions against the building of more council houses “because it would spoil the amenities of the village.” When leases fall due on cottages where some of these villagers have lived all their lives, the owner (who is often the wealthy member of an ancient family who lives a hundred miles or more from the village), all too often decides not to renew the lease. Instead, he asks the tenant to leave.

He may find him or her alternative accommodation in a neighbouring town or village, or he may not bother. He then spends some money

modernising the cottages, perhaps combining two into one larger house suitable for the professional class, and then sells or leases them at inflationary prices or rents. Then there are the farmworkers. I was talking to one the other day—a married man with three children. He earns £l4 (&28) a week, and. has a free cottage. But it is a "tied" cottage: that is to say, if he can’t get on with his employer or finds it difficult to manage on such a low wage, he has to stifle his resentment lest he loses the roof over his head and cannot find another.

Chauffeurs and gardeners who have given long and faithful service to wealthy employers and have had a free cottage as part of their wages often have no guarantee that on the death of their employer they may not find themselves both jobless and homeless.

So life is full of insecurity for a great many people in the villages of England, and young people have a hard struggle to play for a home. Two recently - married couples in this village are an example. In both cases the girls worked until 7 p.m. at the jobs on the night before their Saturday weddings. They were physicaly and nervously exhausted on their wedding-day. Then they were back at their jobs on Monday morning and are working full-time. LONG HOURS

Their husbands work thirteen days out of fourteen (i.e., they have one Sunday off in two weeks), and they work long hours each day so that they can earn plenty of overtime.

But in doing this they put a great strain on their marital relationships. They are often both overtired, and lack the maturity and the restraint to make allowances for each other. They are often worried financially and have scarcely any time together to relax and have more fun.

Many of the young married people who go into the nearby psychiatric hospital with breakdowns do so from the strain of living this kind of existence.

The cost of living climbs up and up. Yesterday I bought two legs chops of New Zealand lamb. They cost me 40 new pence, or 80 N.Z. cents. This season’s local Worcester apples are selling in the shops for 12-14 new pence, or 29 N.Z. cents a lb. The smallest loaf costs 15 N.Z. cents, a pint of milk costs 10 N.Z. cents, and the cheapest cheese (Dutch Edam) costs 58 cents a lb. So life is a hard struggle for those on low incomes, and the threat of much higher food prices when England enters the E.E.C. has a great deal to do with the T.U.C.’s solid vote against Britain’s entry at its recent annual conference.