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From Great Wen to Toad Hall: Aspects of the Urban-Rural Divide in Inter-War Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

R. J. Moore-Colyer
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Extract

Towards the end of his bittersweet novel Vile Bodies Evelyn Waugh has his heroine Nina Blount flying across England en route for her disastrous honeymoon. Attempting to make what passed with him for conversation, her stupid and rather boorish husband managed lamentably to misquote John of Gaunt's ‘Sceptered isle’ speech from Richard II. Then, as Waugh wrote:

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , April 1999 , pp. 105 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

Notes

1. Waugh, E., Vile Bodies (Harmondsworth, 1920).Google Scholar

2. Betjeman, J., Collected Poems (London, 1983).Google Scholar

3. Masterman, C. E. G., The Condition of England (London, 1909).Google Scholar

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5. Ibid, p. 125.

6. Country Life, (26th November, 1927); Horder, in Williams-Ellis, C. (ed), Britain and the Beast (London, 1937), p. 180.Google Scholar

7. Country Life (1st June, 1935).

8. See, for example, Hall, A. D., Reconstruction and the Land (London, 1947).Google Scholar

9. Muggeridge, M., The Thirties (London 1940), p. 198.Google Scholar

10. Saville, J., Rural Depopulation in England and Wales (London, 1957), p. 36Google Scholar. The absence of piped water, electricity and other basic amenities in country areas caused severe problems for urban children evacuated to the countryside during the blitz. (For fascinating details see Ward, S., War in the Countryside, 1939–45 (London, 1988).Google Scholar

11. Country Life (19th February, 1938). A White Paper published in 1944 estimated that up to 30 per cent of the rural population in England and Wales had no mains water, relying instead on standpipes and water carts. Moreover, earth, bucket and chemical toilets abounded so that the White Paper recommended the expenditure of £21 million over 5 years to bring piped water and decent sanitation to rural Britain.

12. Cattell, R. B., The Fight for our National Intelligence (London, 1937), p. 15.Google Scholar

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15. In Joad, , Britain and the Beast, p. 130.Google Scholar

16. Street, A.G., Farming England (London, 1937), p. 4.Google Scholar

17. Farmers Glory, p. 223. Street regularly spoke and wrote of the farming hierarchy of which the despised ‘cowkeeper’ was towards the bottom of the pile. A man whose income derived from the dairy cow would rarely dare enter the same railway carriage as the arable farmer.

18. Peter Mandler has argued that the continued persistence of an imagined rural idyll is in part responsible for the economic decline, cultural stagnation and social divisions apparent in later twentieth-century Britain (Mandler, P., ‘Against “Englishness”: English Culture and the Limits to Rural Nostalgia, 1860–1940’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 7:7 (1997), pp 165–175).Google Scholar

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23. In 1986 producer's notes to writers instructed the latter to ‘give urban listeners 15 minutes of the countryside’ (Laing, S., ‘Images of the Rural in Popular Culture 1750–1980’, in Short, B. (ed.), The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 150, 151.Google Scholar

24. Ashby, A. W., The English Countryside and the Psychology of Scenic Change; typescript evidence to Scott Committee, 1942.Google Scholar

25. Bell, A. in Blunden, E. (ed), The Legacy of England (London, 1928), p. 47.Google Scholar

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27. Stapledon, R.G., The Hills and Uplands of Britain: Development or Decay? (London, 1937), pp. 105–7.Google Scholar

28. Stapledon, R.G., The Land, Now and Tomorrow (London, 1935), p. 231.Google Scholar

29. Gruffudd, P., ‘Back to the Land: Historiography, Rurality and the Nation in Inter-War Wales’, Institute of British Geographers Transactions, ns 19 (1994), 66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. Matless, D., ‘Nature, the Modern and the Mystic: Tales from Early Twentieth Century Geography’, Institute of British Geographers Transactions, ns 16 (1991), 274–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Conford, P. and Walsingham, J., ‘History of the Organic Farming Movement in Britain’, Journalof the Royal Agricultural Society of England (1997), p. 159Google Scholar; Abelson, E. (ed), A Mirror of England: An Anthology of the Writings of H.J. Massingham 1888–1952 (Bideford, 1988), pp. x–xi.Google Scholar

32. Massingham, H.J., The Heritage of Man (London, 1929)Google Scholar; Through the Wilderness (London 1935); A Countryman's Journal (London, 1939); The English Countryman: A Study of the English Tradition (London, 1942); Where Man Belongs (London, 1946).

33. Stapledon, R. G., The Land, Now and Tomorrow, p. 181.Google Scholar

34. Davies, D. H., The Welsh Nationalist Party, 1925–1945: A Call to Nationhood (Cardiff, 1988), p. 97.Google Scholar

35. Gruffudd, P., Land of my Fathers? The Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales and Contested ConservationGoogle Scholar, Rural History Centre Discussion Paper No 2, University of Reading, 1996.

36. Prior to 1932, protection of the countryside depended essentially upon the committed efforts of enthusiastic volunteers involved with such bodies as the Women's Institute, the Royal Institution of British Architects, The Commons, Open Spaces and Footpath Preservation Society (f. 1865), The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (f. 1877), The Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising (f. 1893), The National Trust (f. 1894) and many others besides.

37. National Library of Wales (N.L.W.), C.P.R.W. Minutes, 7th September, 1928; Roberts, M. S. to Morris, T. E., 20th 05, 1928 (C.P.R.W. 41).Google Scholar

38. N.L.W. C.P.R.W. 41.

39. N.L.W. C.P.R.W. 41.

40. Herald of Wales (8th March, 1930).

41. N.L.W. C.P.R.W. Minutes, 5th July, 1929.

42. N.L.W. C.P.R.W. Minutes 10th May, and 17th October, 1934.

43. N.L.W. C.P.R.W. Minutes 13th July, 1931; 7th January, 1932.

44. N.L.W. C.P.R.W. Minutes, 8th March, 1935.

45. Rambler's Monthly Bulletin, 61, 11, 1935.

46. Liverpool Daily Post (13th June, 1938).

47. Sheail, J., Rural Conservation in Inter-war Britain (Oxford, 1981), p. 196.Google Scholar

48. Joad, C. E. M., The Untutored Townsman's Invasion of the Country (London, 1946), pp. 62–3Google Scholar; Street, A. G., Hedge Trimmings (London, 1941 3rd Ed), p. 96Google Scholar; Rawnsley, W. F., Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire (London, 1914), p. 1.Google Scholar

49. Joad, , Untutored Townsman, p. 140.Google Scholar

50. Masterman, , Condition of England, p. 161.Google Scholar

51. Street, , Farmers Glory, pp. 235–6.Google Scholar

52. In Joad, , Britain and the Beast, p. 117.Google Scholar

53. Country Life (April 19, 1924).

54. C.P.R.E. Files, Rural History Centre, University of Reading, 56/1.

55. Joad, , Untutored Towsnman, p. 18.Google Scholar

56. Joad, , Britain and the Beast, pp. 41–44.Google Scholar

57. Miller, H., ‘Urban Renewal and Citizenship: The Quality of Life in British Cities, 1880–1990’, Urban History 22:1 (1995), 72–5.Google Scholar

58. Thompson, F. M. L., The Rise of Suburbia (Leicester, 1982), p. 15.Google Scholar

59. Laing, S., ‘Images of the Rural in Popular Culture’, p. 147.Google Scholar

60. The 1932 Act gave local authorities the power to restrict ribbon development, but by 1935 only 62 out of 417 Rural District Councils had formulated the necessary bye-laws.

61. In Joad, , Britain and the Beast, p. 126.Google Scholar

62. Boumphrey, G. M. in Britain and the Beast, pp. 105–11.Google Scholar

63. Birmingham, George, in Blunden, (ed.), Legacy of England, pp. 188–9.Google Scholar

64. Typescript evidence to Scott Committee, 1942.

65. Street, A. G., Strawberry Roan (London, 1932), pp. 307–8.Google Scholar

66. Joad, , Untutored Townsman, p. 37.Google Scholar

67. Country Life (28th April, 1928).

68. Country Life (22nd February, 1930).

69. Country Life (28th April, 1928).

70. C.P.R.E. Files, Rural History Centre, University of Reading, 237/3.

71. C.P.R.W. ‘A Letter to Landowners’.

72. Times (10th May, 1938).

73. Country Life (5th December, 1936). Full planning control would eventually be implemented under the Labour Government's Town and Country Planning Act which, in effect, nationalised development rights. From now onwards all development would require planning permission, although, of course, agricultural development and afforestation were exempt. The completion of the magisterial Land Utilisation Survey of 1933, which had been undertaken under the direction of Sir Dudley Stamp, had prompted much talk in both official and lay circles of the need to enshrine rural development within an orderly framework of planning. This was given further impetus by the deliberations of Scott's, Lord JusticeCommittee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas (HMSO 1943, Cmnd. 6378)Google Scholar. The Committee's Report, wide-ranging in its coverage, was in essence a compiled résumé of the many concerns over the future of the countryside and of the profound problems of the urban/rural divide. In particular it emphasised the need for rural development to be consistent with the compelling needs of agriculture, rural communities and countryside amenities. The Report, along with the Land Utilisation Survey, provided a context for the seminal Town and Country Planning and Agriculture Acts of 1947, which, in turn, informed subsequent environmental legislation in the early post war years - for example, The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act (1949); The Mineral Workings Act, (1951); The Clean Air Act (1956); and The Opencast Coal Act (1958).

74. C.P.R.E. Files, Rural History Centre, University of Reading 161/13.

75. C.P.R.E. Files, Rural History Centre, University of Reading 78/1.

76. Daily Sketch (25th May, 1933); Times (23rd May, 1933); Country Life (15th July, 1933).

77. Joad, , Untutored Townsman, pp. 203–4.Google Scholar

78. C.P.R.E. Files, Rural History Centre, University of Reading 161/5.

79. Estates Gazette (17th September, 1932).

80. Manchester Guardian (12th October, 1932).

81. Country Life (7th August, 1937).

82. C.P.R.E. Files, Rural History Centre, University of Reading 161/5.

83. E. J. T. Collins, Power Availability and Agricultural Productivity in England and Wales, 1840–1939, Rural History Centre Discussion Paper No 1, University of Reading, 1996.

84. See, for example, Country Life (24th November, 1928); (30th March, 1929); Observer (27th November, 1932).

85. Yorkshire Evening News (1st February, 1932).

86. C.P.R.E. Files, Rural History Centre, University of Reading 109/120/1.

87. 11th Annual Report of the Electricity Commissioners, (HMSO, 1931).

88. Times (5th September, 1933); The Builder (3rd March, 1933).