A West Country Village Ashworthy by W.M. Williams

Author:W.M. Williams [Williams, W.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9780415330145
Google: pSNqGxyLaOMC
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2004-01-15T04:56:48+00:00

Part Two

Introduction

THE first part of this study has been concerned with the relationship between man and the land. It was shown that the farm family is a primary unit in the economy and in the system of land-holding. In order to understand how the land is occupied from one generation to another, the farm family was considered as an instrument for ensuring continuity, and the way in which the transmission of farms is related to family structure was examined. The analysis was based on the period between the Tithe Award of 1841 and the beginning of 1960, with particular emphasis on this century.

During this period of about one hundred and twenty years there have been marked changes in the population structure of Ashworthy, which have affected the whole parish. In common with most of the English countryside, it has suffered a marked decrease in its total number of inhabitants. The process of rural depopulation and ‘the drift of the towns’ have been written about at length—and most commonly in terms of decline and the decay of a long-established way of life. To look at Ashworthy in this general context is to raise a number of questions which so far have not been considered. Has population loss affected the balance between people and land? Has rural depopulation brought about changes in the structure of the farm family and in the means of transmission of farms? Are groups other than farmers affected by population decrease and to what extent? Does ‘a stake in the land’ keep people in the countryside?

In order to answer these and other questions, it is necessary to examine in detail the changes in population which have taken place in Ashworthy and the effects of these changes on different groups. Farmers’ families account for less than half the total population of the parish. There are also a small number of craftsmen and tradesmen, who, like farmers, have property and skills to pass on from one generation to another: a much larger number of the inhabitants are villagers or cottagers—farm labourers, forestry workers and the like—who do not own or occupy land, who have little property to leave to their children and who do not normally teach them occupational skills. It will be shown in Chapter Five and the first part of Chapter Six that these three broad occupational groups have been affected differently by population decrease. Farmers and their families have tended to remain in the countryside; farm labourers have tended to leave; rural craftsmen and their families form an intermediate group, in some ways resembling farmers and in others the landless manual workers.

It appears therefore that the particular relationship which farmers have with the land—the basis of rural life—is of a kind which largely counteracts those pressures which cause others to leave the countryside. On the other hand, as we shall see later, ‘the drift to the towns’ is only one aspect of population change. The people who remain in the countryside do not necessarily live all their lives in the same house or in the same parish.

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