Community Not Hierarchy

The village or parish hall might not be as old as you think it is. Sometimes in my researches, two things coincide, causing a realisation. This two-pronged realisation about the village hall happened to me earlier this year.  First of all, while drafting a blog post for The History Usherette, I wanted to know whatever had become of the village squire.  It turns out that this position, high in the feudal hierarchy, had plummeted during the inter-war years. All those big houses that were sold off, closed up or knocked down in the 1920s and 1930s were victims of a combination of after effects of war – the loss of the male heirs and the crippling death duties that tried to claw back some of the financial cost. This did for much of the small time local aristocracy that ran rural England. And the rural population, now exposed to cinemas, radios and motor vehicles were less inclined to take much notice of them as they faded away. There’s a lot of evidence of this in my local area – I once did a project on Sutton Scarsdale Hall, which stands windowless and ruined above the M1 in Derbyshire. The interior was sold to a museum in the US to pay off debts, then abandoned to the elements.

The remained in our collective imagination for many years, but the village squire was gone

 Then I’ve been researching the life and work of writer L du Garde Peach. One of his jobs had been to edit the "Derbyshire Countryside" magazine, overseeing the content from issue one in 1931 through until 1948.  I went into Chesterfield Local Studies Library to read some early issues. Reading the Foreword to Issue one, written by Brigadier General  E C W D Walthall, I learned that this magazine had initially been set up and published by the Derbyshire Rural Community Council. He described the work of the DRCC as being focussed on rural community welfare – now that the feudal system had ended and the squire gone, a support network was needed for all of the organisations that had sprung up to fill the gaps. The WI, youth hostels, drama groups, folk dancing clubs – they were all to be served by the DRCC. And looking through the contents pages of subsequent issues, it’s clear that they were big on developing village halls as a place for the community to do all of these activities. Now that the big houses and their squires and chatelaines were gone - replaced by ruins or businessmen–owners who didn’t care about the villagers down the road - every place needed a new hub.

Throughout the 1930s villages were encouraged to build and develop them. This wasn’t just happening in Derbyshire – it was all over middle England. I will be seeking out stories of how these places were developed, among more whimsical odes to the joy of village and parish halls. Because I spend a lot of my working life in them – I work for the voluntary sector and these places remain the best venues for the delivery of services for local communities. They continue to thrive and accommodate all kinds of activity and interest. And as such, they offer a window onto the foibles of the English – a joyful, funny, exhilarating window.

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