Clive Aslet

Villages of Britain

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Villages of Britain is thehistory of the countryside, told through five hundred of its mostnoteworthy settlements. Many of Britain's villages are known for theirloveliness, of course, but their role in shaping the nation over thecenturies is relatively untold, drowned out by the metropolitan bias ofhistory.A consummate storyteller, Clive Aslet deftly weaves the worlds ofagriculture, politics, the arts, industry, folklore, science, ecology,fashion and religion into one irresistible volume. The Bedfordshireworks that a century ago manufactured half a billion bricks a year; theCheshire municipality striving to become the country's firstcarbon-neutral community; the Derbyshire estate where the cottagesrepresent the gamut of European architecture; the Gloucestershirecommunity founded by Tolstoyans, who still live by anarchic principles;the Leicestershire town where pub walls are embedded with Jurassic-erafossils; the Morayshire settlement where Hogmanay is celebrated elevendays late; the Pembrokeshire fishing hamlet that inspired Dylan Thomas;the Somerset village that was built on the back of the trade inPeruvian bird droppings; the Suffolk village that is rejectingmodernity by reconstructing a windmill for grinding flour; the Surreywoodland that fosters Europe's most ancient trees – all these areplaces that have made a unique contribution to the narrative of thiscountry.Follow Clive Aslet in visiting all five hundred villages, and you willhave experienced the history of these islands from a uniquely ruralperspective.
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1,164 printed pages
Publication year
2011
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Quotes

  • Laura Shas quoted7 years ago
    At the gates of the monastery
    How inconceivable it must have seemed to the inhabitants of Cerne Abbas in 1530 that within a decade the rich Abbey that gave its name to the village would become defunct, its abbot and monks expelled. The West Country was dominated by monasteries. Above Cerne, the club-wielding giant of prominent masculinity – thought to represent Hercules in honour of the Emperor Commodus – which is etched onto Giant Hill demonstrates that people had been living here long before the monks came. But the Abbey was an ancient foundation, William of Malmesbury ascribing its origin to St Augustine himself. Like many early Christian sites, it had pagan associations: a ‘silver well’ attracted St Edwold, brother of King Edmund, to live beside it as a hermit in the ninth century. And the Abbey was rich: Henry VIII, who would abolish it in 1539, had himself given it land twenty-six years earlier. The village depended on the Abbey for its existence. It knew its place, clustering at the Abbey’s skirts.
    In its heyday, Cerne Abbey educated John Morton, Henry VII’s chancellor (the inventor of Morton’s Fork) and a cardinal. In 1535, its farms kept nearly six thousand sheep. But even before the Dissolution, complaints were being made by a disgruntled monk about the brothers’ gross immorality (they were said to keep loose women in the cellars), not to mention neglect of duty. (A legend would grow up that the giant depicts the last Abbot, as a commentary on his lust.) It is therefore no surprise that he surrendered the Abbey without a fuss, retiring on a comfortable pension of £100 a year.
  • Laura Shas quoted7 years ago
    Road safety for toads
    The year 2009 was a good one for toads in the village of Charlcombe. Nearly two thousand of them were put into buckets and carried across Charlcombe Lane, together with 570 frogs and a quantity of newts. Since 2003, normal traffic has been suspended on the road every February and March, in favour of the amphibians. Toad numbers across Britain have fallen since the 1970s, due to loss of habitat. Dense forestry plantations allow little room for toads; thousands of ponds and boggy places across Britain have been drained in the interests of farming. The human urge to tidy up its surroundings by building garden walls, as well as houses, has deprived the toad of free passage over what had previously been its terrain; untold numbers are squashed on roads.
    Toads need fresh, clean water, preferably in large, deep ponds, to breed in; after they wake from hibernation, they try to return to the
  • Laura Shas quoted8 years ago
    St Non or Lady Nonna is supposed to have been St David’s mother, an aristocratic Welsh nun who was seduced or raped by a Welsh prince and then gave birth to a baby that was surrounded by dazzling light. There is another St Non’s well, with a statue and ruined chapel, at Caerfai in Pembrokeshire, where the event took place. It is thought that she herself came to Cornwall from Wales around 527.
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