COLONY OF OUTCASTS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18819, 6 March 1931, Page 13

COLONY OF OUTCASTS.

DISCOVERED IN BRITAIN. HUNDRED YEARS BEHIND TIMES. 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 literally 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 the hillside 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 clid not know the hamle|, although he knows nearly every other inch of the Forest of Dean, continues

the correspondent. He took me first U another Drybrook nearly ten miles away. I found the forgotten hamlet at last hidden in a thickly-wooded valley between Ellwood and Cilement 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 of 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 even 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 I by Mr Oliver Hoare, who has lived in Drvbrook 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 I for us, although we have made continual appeals to the County Council. “A reverent funeral is impossible in Drybrook. It is 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 Telephone 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 in*provised stretcher.” Mr Hoare is a collier who owns a little cottage property in the hamlet. He showed me his demand note for £6 2s 6d for rates for the half-year. “Why should we be expected to pay 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 half-docen 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 little or no propped of ever regaining employment*"