SOME CHANGES
1. There was not much alteration in the outward appearance of the
villages and the "look" of the country round them for many centuries.
Indeed even now many of the villages themselves are not greatly altered
in their general arrangement. Down to the times of the Tudor kings the
old land and manor customs had gone on since Saxon days, changing but
very slowly. Many of the class which had been villeins in the Middle
Ages had become yeomen; some had got lands of their own, and some
land on the old manors, which they rented. But they did not alter very
much the old way of treating the land, and it was only gradually that
=farmhouses= sprang up away from the villages.
2. In some parts of the country these lonely farmhouses are more
common than in others. There are, for instance, a good many in the
Weald of Sussex which sprang up first as huts in forest clearings, and
afterwards became houses with farm-buildings attached to them.
3. On the borders of great lonely heaths and commons we can often see
very old and very small cottages, with walls of clay, or wood, or
stone, according to the district in which they happen to be. Long ago
some =squatter= built his little hut here, and out of pity, perhaps, or
carelessness, the lord of the manor took no notice. There he remained,
year after year, until custom allowed him to look upon it as his own;
and in time it actually became his private property. Such squatters
in lonely places were often looked upon more or less with fear by the
timid folk living in the distant village. They did not care to do or
say anything to upset the stranger, fearing for the safety of their
sheep, cattle, and poultry. Many little holdings and small farms began
in this way.
4. Many of the =farms=, though they were separate holdings, still
had strips in the big fields of the parish. The crops were sown and
gathered according to the ancient customs, and the cattle turned into
them and out on the waste lands at certain seasons, just as they had
been in the Middle Ages.
5. But about the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a pretty
general movement towards breaking up these big fields into separate
parts, and letting each farmer have his portion to himself, so that
he might know exactly what land was his and what belonged to his
neighbour. So it came to pass that =Enclosure Acts= were passed for
parish after parish. The old common arable fields were divided amongst
those who had rights in them. Then many of the old wastes, heaths,
commons, and marshes were treated in the same way.
6. That caused a great change in the appearance of the parish. Instead
of the fields in long, straight strips, with unploughed balks between
them, the strips belonging to each farmer were thrown into one, and
=hedgerows= planted. In time they became smooth fields, separated from
each other by hedges, in which grew here and there timber trees. The
old cart-tracks, winding across and round the common fields, in time
became =lanes= bounded by high hedges. The trackways across many of the
old wastes and commons in a similar way were turned into lanes, and
the waste broken up into fields. Still a good deal of the waste land
was left, and has never yet been enclosed. So far as we can see now,
this is not likely to happen, because we feel more and more every year
that, for the sake of the health and recreation of the people, it is
absolutely necessary to preserve them as open spaces.
7. The fields, the hedgerows, and the lanes which delight us so much in
the country are, most of them, some two hundred years old.
8. When the farm had its own separate fields allotted to it, it became
convenient for the farmer to live in the midst of his land. So we find
the farmhouse and its buildings, with a few labourers' cottages, a long
way out of the village, and away from the church. If you take notice
you will find that from this outlying farmhouse there is usually a
pretty straight field-path to the parish church.
9. Then, too, in parishes through which a big main road ran, as the
traffic on the road increased, houses of entertainment for man and
beast became necessary; =ale-houses= and =inns= sprang up, with little
farmsteads round them. =Coaches= were put on many roads in the time of
King Charles II, and had regular stopping-places, and these little inns
often became important centres of business. Gradually hamlets sprang up
round many of them.
10. The roads were so bad that horses frequently cast their shoes,
tires came off wheels, and wheels came off carts and coaches; so under
many "a spreading chestnut-tree" a little smithy and wheel-wright's
shop arose. A smithy is always a centre of life and news, as everybody
knows. You can see to-day, along many of our roads, sheds and shops
being opened, where broken-down cycles and motor cars can be repaired
and supplied with odds and ends which they may happen to need.
11. Thus =hamlets= have grown up away from the old village green, its
church, and its manor-house. In scores of places the hamlet has become
of more importance than the old village, and has grown into a little
town, where new churches and chapels and public buildings have sprung
up.
12. Then there are the =districts= where new industries and
manufactures have been planted. That is too large a subject to deal
with here, but think of the great changes these have wrought on the
face of the country in the coal and mineral districts of England in the
last two hundred years.
13. Again, there are the =railways=. Notice how little townships have
grown up round the railway-stations, especially on the main lines in
districts near a big town. Houses spring up for the hosts of people
who, like streams of human ants, hurry to the station to catch the
early morning trains, and, as the afternoon wears into evening, come
again from the station to snatch a few hours' rest at home.
14. We have said nothing of
"The beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea",
and the part they have had in the making of our towns and villages.
This subject would require a book all to itself, and then we shall only
just have begun to think about it, and to find out how little we know
and understand of the things which go to make up our daily lives.
15. Yes, the life of our towns and villages is a very interesting
subject. Nature and Man each works for and with the other; both are
full of mystery, life, and beauty, if we could only use our eyes to
see, our intelligence to understand, our hearts to sympathize, and our
hands to work.
=Summary.=--The earliest _farmhouses_ began as settlers' huts in
such forest regions as the Weald. _Squatters_ gradually got little
holdings near lonely heaths and commons. _Separate farms_, with
farm-buildings and labourers' cottages attached to them, date from
about the middle of the eighteenth century, when the _old common
fields_ began to be enclosed. _Fields and hedgerows and country
lanes_, as we see them now, mostly began then. _New hamlets_
sprang up by main roads as coaches came into use: an ale-house and
a forge were usually the first buildings.
_New towns_ have sprung up in manufacturing districts and round
railway-stations.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Also between Hitchin and Cambridge, at Clothall, in Herts, in the
Chiltern Hills, on the steep side of the Sussex Downs, in Clun Forest,
in Carmarthenshire, and in Wilts.
[2] Spinneys are plantations of trees growing closely together.
[3] A diocese is the district over which a bishop rules.
[4] In the Fens.
[5] When we speak of Saxon work in buildings we mean work done between
the time of King Cnut and the Norman Conquest--the first half of the
eleventh century.
[6] The Cistercian houses here in England, however, were always known
as _abbeys_, though Citeaux, their head-quarters, was in France.
[7] _founded_, that is, established.
[8] _found_, that is, discovered.
[9] _feaden_, that is, feed.
[10] _pullen_, that is, poultry.
[11] The Jews were expelled from England A.D. 1290.
[12] That is, whipped at a cart's tail.
[13] _Terra-cotta_ is a compound of pure clay, fine sand, or powdered
flint.
[14] See the picture on p. 162.
[15] _Jacobean_ means of the time of James I and on to James II.