Insights from walking around England and Wales: #12 Let’s tend to our villages

In October 2018 I walked into a village on the scenic north-Devon coast. Charm oozed out of every cottage garden. History permeated the old church buildings, not to mention the pub. But beneath this bucolic beauty some unsettling trends were afoot.

My host and I sat drinking tea in her cozy kitchen, as she told me about editing the parish magazine. She described how she had expanded the readership and the number of pages, as well as adding virtual distribution. Her excitement led me to read it that evening. There can have been few people in the village who were not mentioned. Members of tug ‘o war teams, winners of the largest marrow competition, children who had run the three-legged race, actors in the Jack and the Beanstalk pantomime, notes from the doctor’s surgery – all the participants in a vibrant village life. Here was an important dollop of the glue holding a small society together.

But underneath this medley of happenings there were some worrying currents.

My host’s husband joined the walk and relayed some village tales. There was the new resident from London, who had renovated a house next to a farm for summer visits. Irritated by the farmyard rooster’s welcoming of the dawn, he sued the farmer for disturbing the peace. After losing in court, he upped sticks and left, presumably searching for a village where the roosters don’t crow.

Then my fellow walker pointed to a picturesque old stone cottage on a headland.

?“The new owner bought it with a promise to renovate it for a teacher or nurse. Of course, that didn’t happen. It’s an Airbnb now.”

He told me about another, smaller village where the pub was now only open on weekends during winter. He said their village was doing better, as it was larger. But his illustration with numbers brought home the point.

“Think about it. A shop and a pub need, say, two hundred families living nearby to survive. Now, imagine that a bunch of houses become second homes, so those people are only here in the summer. Now there are fewer people shopping, going to the library or the pub, joining community events. Everything begins to become marginal,” he explained. He continued, “At a certain point, the ‘village’ morphs into simply a collection of buildings, rather than a community.”

He repeated that their village was still fine – as the parish magazine confirmed. But his insight stuck in my mind, and shortly afterwards when walking through Wales in December, I ventured into several coastal settlements where the pub had closed for the winter, and the sole, shuttered village shop was plastered with old “For Sale” signs. The only sign of life was smoke rising from a few chimneys.

This short stay educated me in both the joy of participating in village life and the challenges in sustaining that existence.

?In 2018-19 I walked 4,300 miles around the coast of England and Wales to raise awareness that cervical cancer can be eliminated in a generation. I share insights every week. My book From Grief to Love tells the stories of the inspiring people I met that year.

?A longer version of this post can be found here .