A VILLAGE REMODELLED.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 199, 16 May 1908, Page 11

A VILLAGE REMODELLED.

The London "Express" publishes an nccount of tho efforts made b.v hvo American ladies, to revolutionise a little old English villain and show England what hor country districts might become in the future. Mrs. Woodhull Martin and hor daughter arc the .Americans in question. Mrs. Woodhull, as she was then, was tho pioneer' of the " woman's "rights" movement in tho United States more than forty years ago, and she is the only woman who was ever nominated for the Presidency of the United States. She married Mr. John Biddulph Martin, an -English banker, about thirty years ago, and on his death she and her daughter inherited his lartje estates.

When tho property came into her hands the village i was in a tumble-down condition, the village' school managed in tho old bad, inefficient style, the farmhouses wore in a ruinous condition, and the villagers as much cut off from 1 communication with tho outside world as if they had been in the middle of the American Continent.

These two American ladies saw that, something bad to be dono to attract n different class of cultivators to the soil, and they determined to devote their lives and their wealth to doing so. The old manor-houso farm was almost a ruin, but these ladies restored it and founded in it the Woman's Agricultural Club and College, and to-day it houses about thirty women, who are studying agriculture under competent teachers. The plan is to cut up the estate into small holdings, ranging in size from 5 acres to 25 acres, whieTi will be taken up by pupils of the school or other competent persons. In the village itself tho change! has been most remarkable. Half the houses are on tho telephone, Mvhich, by tho way, is the result of a long war. which Mrs. Woodhull Martin and her- daughter waged with tho National Telephone Company. Now the village folk can talk to each other without leaving their firesides, and they! can order their supplies from the shops in Tewkesbury and Cheltenham without taking tho long journey to these towns. The village school has been revolutionised. Mrs. AVoodliull Martin and Miss Woodhulltook over tho school recently, and installed two trained kindergarten teachers from' London. These teachers declare that there is not another school in the world' so thoroughly equipped as the village school at Bredon's Norton. The finest gramaplione that money can buy places the best music of the day at the disposal of these village children, and they are taught to march to the strains of an auto-piano,; so that the teacher can devote her whole' attention to tho, children themselves. . Motor-cars aro at the disposal of tho teachers for visiting tho towns, and in the'spring the children have the use of a motorlaunch on the Avon. The fame of the school has gone abroad. in . the neighbourhood, and already its capacity is taxed. Some children walk in two or three miles

to attend it, and work has already been begun- on its enlargement. When that is completed a motor-omnibus will make a daily round of' the villages within a tenmile radius, and collect the children who wish to attend the Bredon's Norton school.

But, it may be objected,, all this is not practical. The reply is that it is intensely practical. The Woman's Agricultural Club and College is self-supporting, and the village school, while, of course, it is an example of perfection, is an object-lesson in what can bo done.