THE SILLIEST VILLAGE IN ENGLAND

Evening Star, Issue 22248, 28 January 1936, Page 12

THE SILLIEST VILLAGE IN ENGLAND

STORY OF HA DOER HAH “ Silly Haddenham ” is our traditional name. The title was conferred at some unrecorded date when the villagers built a roof over the local pond to keep the ducks dry! It is preserved to-day in the fine scorn of’our 1,400 inhabitants for cinemas, street lighting, water service, or any other of these new-fangled notions likely to disturb the calm of immemorial centuries, writes Douglas Wilkie in the ‘ Melbourne Herald.’ “We doesn’t have more need o’ them than a toad has of a side-pocket ” —as Adam, the village ancient, .epigrammatised the other day with all the wisdom and finality of his 90-odd years, adding a few round oaths in that mysterious Bucks dialect which recently drove a visiting magistrate into desparing demands for a court interpreter. So “ silly ” we remain. While every other village within a 40-mile radius, of Big Ben follows the march of Time, and sheds its thatched roofs and local charm, Haddenham retreats behind the same mud walls which repelled the invasions of Romans, Danes, and Cavaliers. Once the main breeding centre of the world-famous Aylesbury ducks, home of the finest craftsman in the south midlands, and so self-contained that it was a ‘ disgrace ” for a Haddenham lass or lad to marry outside the parish, we jealously preserve these privileges of our heritage. "OVER THE ROAD. The legendary thatch over the pond has disappeared. But when the dudksget tired of the pond they are still entitled to cross the. road for a drink at the * Rose and Thistle ” —and woe betide the motorist who injures so much as a feather of these dignified pedestrians. We know that under the King’s highway code a duck may’ cross the road to “ go to water,” and no motorist must imperil its natural instincts.' With mere chickens it is a different matter.

. Aylesbury ducklings are still hatched in front of cottage fires, and kept warm and safe between the sheets of the housewife’s bed. Health inspectors try to teach us differently. But they are ignorant foreigners from London. W e learned to breed the finest ducks in the world 600 years before, health inspectors were invented.

The legends of Haddenham’s silliness are legion; Haddenliafn folk are reputed to have raked the reflections of the moon from the pond in mistake for cheese. It is even said that to this day they put their legs out of the window to see if_ it is dark, and' that some of them believe that the men of Cuddington—a village three miles away—have tails and beat their wives.

And why not? Stranger things than cheese have been raked from the village pond, which was thought to be bottomless until last summier’s drought turned it into a mudhole. As for the men of Cuddington they may well have had horns as well as tails until a few years ago, for it was only then that the hereditary feud between the two villages was settled and the inhabitants reached speaking terms. We can show tho visitor a bridge on the parish boundary where the “ bucks ” of Haddenham and Cuddington used to gather in the cool of the evening and throw stones at one another until blood flowed and honour was satisfied. NO MAIN THOROUGHFARE. There is the story, too, of the Cuddington lad who came to a church lantern lecture within our territory and' went home with two black eyes as tokens of his temerity. The spirit of sturdy independence has led to an amount of in-breeding that eugenists would call unhealthy. But old Adam, with another reminder of his 90 odd years, says that Haddenham ducks and Haddenham men always were rare fine breeders. And he ought to know! The county authorities have not yet ventured to "build a main road through our village. This helps to keep out motorists, estate agents, caravanners, retired stockbrokers, amateur artjsts, and all the rest of the hungry horde that is turning the highways of England into a string of petrol pumps, tea gardens, and handicraft “ shoppes.” Another bulwark against the advance of modernity are our mud walls. We do not call them mud. “ Wichert ” is the local name. It is a mixture of clav and straw produced nowhere else in the whole of England. Most of our houses are built of it. So are the Bft walls, neatly thatched or tiled on top, which surround every garden, yard, and field in the village area. These curious Avails have created, miles of narrow, tortuous lanes and alleyways into which no stranger can venture with immunity even by daylight, far less after dark. They give us an advantage over oui latest enemies—hikers. Toe hikers stride insolently toward the nlage, and we watch them become swailoned uo in the maze of Wichert walls. After half an, hour, and perhaps longer, they emerge, limping., the wav they went in hot . and dispirited, ;■> d as angry as beetles driven out of a drain.

“ Ay. we waggered you be be dizzened in Haddenham,” we tell them, not too unkindly, and direct them back to the main road so that, having taught them a lesson, we may be rid of their irreverent presence as quickly as possible. Most of the Wichert walls were built at least 300 years ago. Some say that t'-'i alleyways, which in places are 3ft wide, were made for the benefit of the ducks, so that the precious birds would not get lost on their way to the pond, which adjoins the graveyard of our thirteenth century church. But the real reason is lost in antiquity. Only the rude forefathers beneath those illegible tombstones know the secret. And they are sleeping so peacefully we cannot disturb them.

Near the church is a thatched cottage where George lives. George is the local saint and hero, our champion against the Dragon Progress George, who is 72, has never travelled in any sort of automobile. (He did once get into a train—hut that is a long story.) “ WHY. SHOULD I?” “ There be 6,000 people killed by infernal machines in England every year,” said George. “ Oi dun care for ’em, and they dun care for me. Oi dun want to be killed and Oi dun travel in ’em.” “ And as for travelling,” continued George, “ Oi like Haddenham, Haddenham likes Oi, and Oi nun want to leave it, far or near. W T hy should Oi?” Why indeed ? And they call us “ Silly Haddenham!’' Are we sillier now than we were 3,000 years ago, when our woad-painted forebears raised the same Wichert walls

against wolves and wildcats ? Or when we helped Boadicea to build the great Icknield Way which still runs like an old scar across the Chilterns a league from our doors and meadows all the way from Norfolk to Wessex? Are we sillier than the men of Haddenham who drove off the Dane with' haulberk and battleaxe? And those who rallied <n John Hampden when he cantered through our streets and called ' on us to make our stand against

Rupert’s Cavaliers that were riding and roystering through the Vale, killing good Aylesbury men and ducks besides* They, will answer such questions a few miles away across the fields where the ancient spires of Oxford proclaim the wisdom of England; or across other fields to Chequers, where the Prime Ministers of England come from the dust, of Westminster to refresh them•selves with draughts of good English air.