A child’s perspective


I live on the top of a hill outside the village of Knightwick, which is in the Teme valley. From my house I can see the beautiful rolling countryside in the valley. Below there are farms and I like to watch the colours of the fields change from brown in the Autumn to green in the Spring and yellow in the Summer ready for harvest.


All around my house are woods that I can walk in with my two dogs, which are golden retrievers. Although I have been in the woods almost weekly since I could walk, no visit is ever the same. Sometimes I see rabbits playing. I have heard woodpeckers tapping in the trees and there are always the trees rustling in the wind.


I like living in the country because there is space to play and beautiful things all around me. But if I want to go to the shops or to swim or to go to the cinema I must ask my parents for a lift or take an expensive bus ride. There are not many things for young people to do.


I go to school in a nearby village. Lots of my friends


have to come on a long journey on a bus to school. So seeing friends after school is almost impossible.


Every morning when I wake up I am glad I live in the country because it is peaceful and makes me feel happy and relaxed. 


Abigail Smith, Aged 13


The farmer’s perspective


Fifty years ago it was a small village. People lived and worked in the village and the work was centred around agriculture. Then the village started to grow. People moved in but it wasn’t where they worked. It became a dormitory.


Established businesses were closed. The village stonemason had been there since the end of the First World War. Most of the headstones in the graveyard were his work. But the complaints from the new residents, about the noise of his works and the dust, led to it being closed down.


And the farmers that have survived face opposition from incomers. New technology and bigger machines need modern buildings. At every step of the planning process those who have moved to the village in pursuit of the rural idyll object.


for the village pig roast.


The farmers have to fight for every bit of development and eager-eyed incomers are swift to phone environmental health or animal welfare agencies if they suspect any misdoings. However the same standards don’t seem to apply to the newer residents. Their cats are free to roam and kill birdlife and defecate in grain stores.


The stonemason was pushed out of the village. The farmers are being pushed to its edge.


Ironically it is those very farmers who are affected by these objections who are maintaining that idyll by providing the gates for the gated-road and the pig


The village is still changing. Once again there are more people living and working in it. This time the work is made possible by information technology. Whether there will be a place for those who work the land remains to be seen. 


Anonymous


www.arthurrankcentre.org.uk


11


belonging and believing


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