COLONY OF OUTCASTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 15

COLONY OF OUTCASTS.

DISCOVERY IN BRITAIN. HUNDRED YEARS BEHIND TIMES. NO ROAD TO OUTER WORLD. Eighty persons who live within three miles and a-half of Coleford, Gloucestershire, are at times cut off entirely from the outside world, says a Daily Mail correspondent. They are the inhabitants of Drybrook, a hamlet between the spurs of two hills in the Forest of Dean, and they live in conditions that recall the Middle Ages. Drybrook has to be seen to be believed. It has no public lighting nor drainage, no main water, and, worst of all, no road. After dark and in bad weather it is cut off from civilisation. The only approach is by a tortuous, treacherous footpath through the woods. Projecting tree roots, deep pits, and swamps are a danger to life and limb at night time. Tradesmen are often unable to deliver essential supplies; doctors have sometimes been unable to make the perilous journey to visit the sick; and the dead have liter ally to be hauled up the hillside for burial. Yet there is a colliery, a quarry, and a farmyard in the hamlet, and the inhabitants have to pay rates, although they cannot even induce the Gloucestershire County Council to provide them with a road. HARDSHIPS OF ISOLATION. Here are two incidents which illustrate the hardships of their life of isolation. A collier’s hand was blown off by an explosion of gelignite. His fellow-workmen had to use an old door as a stretcher, and it was all they could do to carry him half a mile up thebillside to the nearest road. Another man’s leg was fractured in an accident at the quarry. It took half a dozen men to carry him to the nearest point an ambulance could reach. Drybrook is so inaccessible that many persons who live only a few miles away have never even heard of its existence. The driver of the motor car I hired for my visit did not know the hamlet, although he knows nearly every other inch of the Forest of Dean, continues the correspondent. He took me first to another Drybrook nearly 10 miles away. I found the forgotten hamlet at last hidden in a thickly-wooded valley between Elhvood and Clements End Green. The footpath that leads to it is just a beaten path,through the trees. Sheep, pigs, goats, and fowls were everywhere in the woods, and a careful descent 01-the hillside brought me to the old grey stone houses of the villagers.

REVERENT FUNERAL IMPOSSIBLE. Drybrook is about 100 years old, and 100 years behind the times. Nothing has ever been done there in the way of public works. The inhabitants are even worse off than their forbears. At one time the hamlet was at least accessible. The land around it, however, has gradually been enclosed during the years, and now no vehicle can approach within half a mile. What this means to those who have their homes there was explained to me by Mr Oliver Hoare, who has lived in Drybrook all his 50 years and is a member- of the West Dean Parish Council. “We are a little better than outcasts,” he said. “Nothing is ever done for us, although we have made continual appeals to the County Council. , “ A reverent funeral is impossible in Drybrook. It ig no easy task to carry a coffin up the slippery footpath to the road. Our children have to walk inches deep in slush and mire to get to school, and in the wet weather the mothers have to carry ‘their youngsters through the mud and water. NO TELEPHONIC CONNECTION. “ Tradespeople will deliver here only twice a week. There is no telephone to summon help in an emergency, and doctors do not like coming here to visit the sick. We cannot blame the doctors. It is not safe for a cat to reach Drybrook after dark, let alone a human being. Invalids who have to be sent to hospital have to be carried away in an armchair or on an improvised stretcher.” Mr Hoare is a collier, who owns a little cottage property in the hamlet. He showed me diis demand note for £6 2s 6d for rates for the half-year. “ Why should we be expected to pay rates? ” he asked. “We get nothing for our money. The County Council have turned down our request for a road, although this would cost only £2500. “ We do not ask for public lighting and sanitation or any of the other conveniences of town life, but we do ask to be treated with common humanity and not be cut off from outside aid. Another colliery, now disused, and two more quarries would be opened here if only means of transport were provided. Another halfdozen men could be employed at the colliery where I work. Instead, we have men here who have been out of work for two years, with litle or no prospect of ever regaining employment.”