My village isn't famously interesting like some. It's a typical Suffolk village that has grown and grown, although it still has a church, primary school, pub, shop and post office, fish and chip shop and a doctors so we are very lucky - and perhaps not so typical after all!.
It has two small meeting places - the little United Reformed Church and the even smaller Old School Room. When enough money has been raised it will have a new Community Hall too and the Scouts are raising money for a new Scout Hall after theirs was condemned.
It also has lots of houses, from the very old..........(which my Great, Great Grandparents would have known when they lived in the village in the second half of the 1800's)
to the new estate of 28 homes being built at the other end of the village and houses have been built on all small pieces of land. Where once there was a coach company there are houses, where the old village hall was in the 1980's there are houses, where a big orchard belonging to one of the villages 'Big Houses' once was, there are very smart houses with a private road to them.
The very Old Fire Station is a house
As is the Old Telephone Exchange
Eventually - when the housing market improves - another estate will be built on most of this field at my end of the village.
A small piece of overgrown land has just been cleared - I'm guessing whoever owns it is planning on applying for planning permission to build here too
But in the middle of the village is something much older than all the houses . A glacial erratic, supposedly used in the C15 for outdoor preaching by wandering friars and later by John Wesley.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
I'm not sure how you feel about it, but in our neck of the woods villages are being destroyed by massive green belt developments, frequently increasing the number of properties in the village by a factor of five or more, and in some cases effectively wiping out the agricultural land between the villages. And, of course, without any of the necessary supporting infrastructure - roads totally inadequate, no schools or GP surgeries, no shops. On raising some of these concerns wit local councillors their response is almost a paraphrase of Norman Tebbitt's get on your bike - they are expecting the new residents to walk or cycle everywhere, or use the almost non-existent public transport.
ReplyDeleteGoodness Will - it sounds like you and I live in the same piece of country - all those arguments about lack of additional infrastructure apply here; along with inadequate water supply and overloaded sewage treatment capacity. And still their build.
DeleteIt is exactly the same where I live. Our small town is now ringed with new developments and still we have just two small primary schools, one secondary school and one doctors.
DeleteAlmost every village and town has houses being built around it, spreading across fields that once grew food. At the moment houses on new big estates are not selling well and some have stopped building. I hope they stop building for many years!
DeleteIt looks a pretty village. When we lived down the road in Essex, the one thing missing was stone in the counties around us, similar to the Preaching Stone. For megalithic hunters prehistory was scarce,
ReplyDeleteThe only stones here are flints - mostly small and not very interesting
DeleteI love that Preaching Stone! I really must visit your village sometime.
ReplyDeleteNot much to see here!
DeleteWe've heard the food at your house is pretty good -- maybe she's hoping to drop in to tea!
DeleteWe are lucky that our village has all the amenities you list too. Not many have now. We are getting more and more developments built, in many cases on land that was once gardens. The latest one is particularly large with 30+ houses, but no pavements, just a couple of rows of sloping edging sets at the edge of each property. Everyone has to walk in the middle of the road between the many parked cars. Children, mothers with pushchairs and people on mobility scooters must find it a real trial. I can't quite work out how on earth this got past the planners.
ReplyDeleteMy village is the only one I know that has all the places in my list. Many have none of them.
DeleteI haven't come across estates being built without paths - that's very odd
Ours is called a village but is the size of a small town. It's not at all pretty but is known for being home to Broadmoor and Wellington College.
ReplyDeleteTowns have spread almost to touch the villages around them - but no extra facilities
DeleteHow I would love a chippy and a pub in our village, but essentially it's some housing that's built up around a farming community. Agree strongly with Tracy above referring to the lack of any pavements on these modern estates - presumably they cram the houses in so tightly that there is no room left, not great.
ReplyDeleteAlison in Wales x
There were two pubs and about 6 shops at one time I've been told - going back to the 50's.
DeleteThe pub here is very basic and falling down!
I like the way those houses have retained a nod to their previous function, what a great idea. I live on the edge of a village surrounded by fields. It's where I grew up. Sadly, in more recent years I've seen greedy developers buy up no longer used allotments which were a haven for wildlife, agricultural land, and even buy a plot with three houses and build six there. The village has one street running through it, original houses were built when no-one had cars, hence now street parking. The allotments in the middle of the village are now a housing estate, and farm land at the far end of the village likewise. Luckily I live on the outskirts.
ReplyDeleteThe village has one pub, a school and a Post Office/shop.
It's history is disappearing.
It's all about greedy developers. See a green space on a map, buy it, destroy any wild habitat, and make a fortune.
Jean.
This village has several businesses with large trucks that have to creep through the old centre of the village to get to the main road. They must shake the old houses a lot
DeleteI really enjoyed reading about your village and seeing the different buildings. Also, how lovely to be able to trace your family back to the village and know that your great grandparents lived there. Thank you for the tour of your village, very enjoyable. My parents moved around a lot after the war basically in search of housing and better jobs. We lived in Essex, Kent and finally Hertfordshire. Jean in Winnipeg
ReplyDeleteMy family on my Dad's side are all Suffolk born and many are buried in churchyards in villages all around Mid Suffolk. Here it's the Great Great Grandparents and one of their daughters
DeleteJust love the glacial erratic. How do such things survive the centuries and not get carved up to be the stone in some building or other long before now?
ReplyDeleteIt's sat right in the middle of the village for several 100 years now. Hope it survives for 100s more
DeleteI do love the signs in front of the places that used to be businesses in your village. A lovely way to keep things alive and remembered.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
I forgot to take a photo of the old pub - also a house!
DeleteIt looks like a fabulous little village. It may not look interesting to you but for someone who doesn't live there it seems to have lots of little things of interest.
ReplyDeleteWe certainly have more useful facilities than many villages. But it never seems very picturesque compared to some villages in Suffolk
DeleteIt all looks lovely, although the 'Fire' buckets would be hard pressed to put a fire out wouldn't they!!
ReplyDeleteOur small town will end up joined to both Lancaster and Preston if farmers keep selling off their land along the A6 to developers, it's getting ridiculous now. Our schools, dentists and doctors are all on the verge of not being able to cope at all.
Around the edge of Stowmarket there are many villages now only a couple of fields away from the new estates. Suffolk is filling up with houses everywhere
DeleteWhen my family moved to Naperville in 1966, it had a population of 14,000. Now it is around 150,000 so our town has become a city. It has lots of everything but still has some of the original buildings, altho, of course many, many, many have been replaced. It's a big change but I'm used to it now.
ReplyDeleteThat's a huge increase in population. I hope in the future they'll have to stop building or there will be no green spaces left
DeleteYou have some very neat history there. In our little community the houses are fewer rather than greater over time. Businesses are long gone as the auto enabled people to travel farther to find shops they needed. We have empty houses beyond repair that should be condemned. There is a housing shortage in the area so very strange for houses to stand empty.
ReplyDeleteJust as much development around here, all allowed because it is said to be "infill". One is an estate of 50 houses. Another is of much larger and expensive houses down near a stream where we all know that it flood. The infill grows, and next they will be infilling the infill. No extra facilities planned. We are all of the same mind in our responses here, but for all the good it does we might as well be standing on your preaching stone to say it.
ReplyDeleteYour village sounds lovely. I like the fact historic buildings are being re-imagined and turned in to homes. Those structures were built to last and tearing them down to build new seems wrong. Massachusetts new home construction has slowed tremendously. That said, over the last 25 years many farms sold land and houses were built. It is sad to see farmland disappear. We have two family farms remaining: Verrill Farm and Clark Farm. Hopefully they will continue to thrive.
ReplyDeleteI love the history that you have in your backyard (so to speak). One would never find a Stone like that here in NZ. Having said that, I remember where original buildings and farmland used to be, that are now covered in houses or industrial complexes. Progress!
ReplyDeleteI loved seeing your village and especially the places that are now homes. We see that a bit here sometimes but not nearly so often, I think.
ReplyDeleteWhen we moved to our village it had everything we needed, including a doctor and three pubs. Now there are much more people, but no infrastructure. Only the kindergarten and the primary school are still here, and a tiny village library where I usually am the only visitor.
ReplyDeleteThere are new rules now about new decelopments, they are not allowed and instead the old houses in the center of the villages shoud be renovated. A lot of them are empty or rent out to refugees as long as they are inhabitable. But who wants a tiny damp old house without any free space around it and without a parking space? Especially with the new energy saving rules where you ahve to insulate walls and roof, put in new windows and a heating system which uses at least forty percent of renewable energy? So, all the villages apply for a special permission for a new development and a lot of the get it granted.
Hilde in Germany
Well Sue, you taught me something new today - "glacial erratic", I had to read up about it, thank you. Over here, we have a tiny population (around 5 million) so our problems are minor. But, nonetheless, infill housing, and the problems of NIMBY and the urban sprawl out into valuable agricultural land all cause concern over here. The old 'quarter acre' section is now fair game for developers. One generously sized section was transformed by removing the old home and building 12... yes 12!! townhouses in its place!
ReplyDelete