I'm currently reading . . . .

The Lost Village, by Richard Askwith

If there is one type of book that I enjoy in particular it's a book about the countryside and all that the genre implies, and so the book that's currently my bedside companion for reading my way through last thing at night, The Lost Village, is a great read as far as I'm concerned. Not only does Richard Askwith note the changing of the countryside and the losing of so much of that which was once familiar and commonplace, but he does so through a series of interviews, recollections and observations, all of which bond the pages together into what is, for me certainly, a 'must-read' book.
Perhaps part of the book's attraction is that it not only charts the countryside of the past that has already been lost or is on the point of extinction, but looks closely at the changing face of today's countryside. When I was a boy, more than fifty years ago now, going to school in the countryside invariably meant attending the village school; going to the shop meant a trip to the village emporium where you could get anything from a postage stamp to a ball of string, a pound of cheese to a newspaper. In addition to the plethora of items that were available for purchase there was also one other important commodity, and that was the opportunity to chat with neighbours and friends whilst on the way there and back and whilst in the shop. The Postmistress/Shopkeeper was invariably everyone's confidant, and the keeper of the secrets of the village. That has now all-but gone for ever.

Today the buildings that formed the heart of Village Community life , the Post Office, the School, the Shop, tied cottages, pubs, and often the Church as well, have been converted into houses for people whose income allows them the luxury of dwelling in a village without actually living I in it in any real sense. In his book, Richard Askwith comments on the ludicrous situation of a farm-worker who commutes from his council house to work on the land each day, his tied cottage having been sold off, passing, as he commutes, the solicitor who has bought the cottage and turned it into luxury housing, and who commutes from the cottage to the town each day. Both commuting, yet in opposite directions.

Much of the change has come about in the years since it was decided that a house was not a sanctuary for the the family to grow and evolve in but rather an investment, a construction to be constantly added to and 'improved' (although sometimes the improvements prove highly questionable, and then sold on from one pair of hands to another, each time for a higher and higher price. The sadness of this is that the true villager finds themselves priced out of their own village, often the only option open to them being the few remaining council or housing trust houses that have not been sold into private hands as well. Hand in glove with this whole exercise are the high rents charged to tenants, often making even the rental properties beyond the reach of villagers. The result is that in the average village today you find fewer and fewer inhabitants whose have roots stretching back more than a decade or two, apart that is, from the inhabitants who slumber in the church and chapel graveyards.

I often write in this blog about the Corsham of my youth, the village-minded town in which I grew up. With its Precinct and Car-parks, and the changes in general to the appearance of the town, although it contains the outward appearance of the familiar buildings, the change to the heart of the town is drastic enough to make it unrecognisable in many ways.

Perhaps what we long for is the security of the familiar in these days of all-too often unwelcome change. Whatever the reason for the popularity of books and articles about 'lost' village life and the loss of the village craftsmen, there is a refuge of sorts to be found in books such as Askwith's, even if the refuge is a false one, created only in the mind of the reader as a sop to his memory.