24 the spectator | 7 september 2019 | http://www.spectator.co.uk
London neighbours used to brawl, vomit
and shoot up in the street, but at least they
weren’t sanctimonious.
There is a secret set of rules in these
places that you can only learn the hard way.
Occasionally locals will give you pointers.
Early on, someone left an aggressive note on
our car telling us never to exercise our dog
on a small patch of greenery nearby because
it was private property. But we had never
taken our dog anywhere near this area, so
assumed it must have been a warning issued
in advance. We discovered that there is a
strict hierarchy which is calculated solelyby time served. So the lady with a propane
bird cannon gets a free pass because she is
the longest-standing resident of the village.
Never mind that the cannon stops her neigh-
bours from sleeping; she’s been running the
village raffle since coronation year.
People here really don’t like change,
particularly if they’re elderly. It’s perfectly
acceptable to allow your house to fall into
decay, as long as you don’t change anything.
No development goes unprotested, even
when it would benefit the local area. A pro-
posed bypass that would hugely reduce traf-
fic through the village is fiercely resisted by
locals who might be able to see the new road
from the end of their orchards. They don’t
seem to realise that opposition to all forms
of change only makes it more likely that the
worst forms of change will win out. Driv-
ing through the area, you frequently come
across the remnants of traditional villag-
es, now swallowed up by urban sprawl, butefforts to resist the onward march of devel-
opers fail because the council have learnt
to disregard the views of people who are
fundamentally unreasonable.
It’s no surprise that English villages
are in terminal decline. Post offices, village
halls, GP surgeries, shops, petrol stations
and pubs have suffered from widespread
closures, with rural schools particularly hard
hit. Liberal Democrat MP Matthew Taylor,
author of a National Housing Federation
report on rural living, points out that vil-
lages are increasingly becoming ‘ghettos of
the very rich and the elderly’, and if current
trends continue, almost half of rural house-
holds will be over the age of 65 by 2039.
If there are no working-age adults to run
the local village services, then those services
cease to exist; and when there are no village
services, working-age adults are reluctant
to move to an area.
All of this creates a hostile environment
for the sort of young people who might
bring fresh blood to the community, invest
money into the village, and help in efforts
to preserve the environment. It was once
common for people to live in places like this
from young adulthood through to old age,
building strong ties to the local area. But vil-
lages that once would have been made up of
the full range of age groups look increasing-
ly like retirement communities. Reactionary
residents seem incapable of recognising that
their behaviour doesn’t protect the village,
but rather hastens its end.
Six months after we moved in, we
found out that our next-door neighbour
had been furtively coordinating a cam-
paign to encourage other neighbours to
make complaints to the council about
our new fence. At that point we decid-
ed we’d had enough and moved back to
London. Last week, Rory Sutherland sug-
gested that no one ever does this. We did,
because a long commute is only worth it if
coming home is a joy, and the toxic culture
we discovered in our village made life
there far from joyful. Our house is now a
holiday cottage, which we rent out to the
sort of young urban people who fantasise
about rural life but are wise enough not to
try it full-time. They are delighted by the
chocolate box village and quirky décor —
and have no idea how dysfunctional the
community really is.A
s newlyweds in our late twenties,
my husband and I decided to move
from a crime-ridden (if trendy) Lon-
don postcode to a picture-postcard village
within commuting distance of the capital.
We bought a rather run-down cottage which
we imagined would be the perfect canvas
for our aspirations: island benches, planta-
tion shutters and lashings of Farrow & Ball.
We’d get the house done and have some
babies. There would be country dog walks,
veg patches and village fêtes. What bliss.
Before we moved in, we chatted to a
friendly elderly man in the village. ‘Oh
there’s been lots of change in the village
lately,’ he told us. Like what? ‘People mov-
ing in, people moving out...’ How funny, we
thought, that a few new residents counts as
radical change. In retrospect, it should have
been a warning sign.
Things started off well. We subjected our
neighbours to a charm offensive: homemade
cakes, wine, cards, invitations to dinner. We
signed up to help with church activities,
made food for local events, and donated a
fancy bottle of champagne to the village raf-
fle. ‘It’s so nice,’ I told my London friends
piously. ‘Such a sense of community.’
But then came the fence. When we
moved in, our garden was surrounded by
a mostly dead, mostly brown hedge with a
big hole in the middle. So down came the
grotty conifers, and up went a smart new
fence. A few days into the work, the man in
charge of building it told us that he’d been
harangued by some passing locals. We were
a bit shocked by that, but he shrugged. ‘Pret-
ty typical in places like this,’ he said.
At the church AGM, we found out what
he meant. Everyone knew that we were
‘the people with the fence’. Some villagers
were perfectly nice about it; others were
eye-wateringly rude. The fence was ‘stark’.
‘I very much hope it softens,’ said another
neighbour. The hedge had been a beloved
fixture, as it turned out, despite its manky
state. Removing it was akin to pissing up the
wall of the parish church.
Soon after we found out that someone
had called the council to complain about
our fence. We eventually worked out that
the call had come from the people next
door who had initially seemed so nice. More
fool us. Soon their friendly greetings stopped
and were replaced by glares. Our old
‘I was this close to No. 10
and then they saw my name.’Village fate
Moving to the country was a huge mistake
LOUISE PERRY
Our old London neighbours used
to brawl, vomit and shoot up, but at
least they weren’t sanctimonious