The Midsomer Murder of Rural Life

The village of Holkham in Norfolk was built by the owners of the eponymous Hall. They wanted to enact and reinforce their 18^th Century view of rural life – remarkably similar to ours today – of a romantic bucolic existence.  In fact the village residents were effectively paid to live and dress in a way commensurate with the stereotypical fantasies of Holkham Hall’s owners. This took no heed of the grinding poverty that was the reality of working on the land. Many would later swap the life for the presumably less onerous privations of the industrial revolution.

One of the great attributes of villages in Britain is their ability to assimilate change. The range and age of the buildings and building materials, frequently displaying architectural deference to a church or fortification, bear testament to this. Perhaps this combination of accessibility, via the new, and their history is one of the reasons why villages seem to have engendered the same warm sentiments throughout the ages. So different from the urban environment, villages can offer charm and a form of escapism to those who visit or to those who are just pleasantly surprised when passing through.

However, I don’t have a particularly romantic view of whatever the typical village represents. Generally the transport infrastructure is poor and facilities are limited but they perhaps make up for this in other communal ways. Maybe the lack of infrastructure is what’s prevented these smaller communities becoming burgeoning towns. Indeed, there are many examples of the opening of railway stations – or even their subsequent closure – transforming many erstwhile villages. And of course the coming and influence of the motor car, and the roads to facilitate it, cannot be underestimated.

But perhaps changes in themselves, which would possibly come in the fullness of time anyway, are not the most important obstacles to retaining a village’s perceived character. Changes need to be absorbed and assimilated in a way beneficial to the community and character of a village, but this requires time.  Therefore the most significant parameter is probably the rate of change. Perhaps the life and indeed death of a village, either through growth or stagnation, would be accurately reflected in terms of the annual population change. The greatest change would likely correspond to a rapid growth or decline in population that forms a significant proportion of the overall population of the village.

New planning laws mean that rural towns and villages are now forced to accept new building developments. Local to me, 750 new houses will have to be built in a village with a population of 3,700. This will mean an influx equal to about two-thirds of the population of the village in a very short time, overwhelming the already stretched facilities. This also offers no opportunity for a more gradual assimilation of such a large number of new residents to retain a particular village character, whatever that may be.

Unquestionably, new housing, and lots of it, is urgently required. But perhaps rather than piecemeal developments, a better option would be to build new towns, in areas outside of flood plains and where there are good rail and road communications: and where essential facilities, such as schools and surgeries, could be properly planned to take account of the numbers involved.

The General Conference of the UNESCO meeting in Paris from 17 October to 21 November 1972, at its seventeenth session, formally noted that;

“…the cultural heritage and the natural heritage are increasingly threatened with destruction not only by the traditional causes of decay, but also by changing social and economic conditions which aggravate the situation with even more formidable phenomena of damage or destruction,

Considering that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world…”

Perhaps this wasn’t aimed at the humble and ubiquitous village in Britain. Nevertheless, who’s to say that they aren’t an important part of our heritage in the measured and organically changing way in which they’ve always formed part of the landscape?