“Having a plot of land 80-ft. frontage by 120-ft., I should be pleased if some reader would submit a plan and elevation-sketch of a detached house, something attractive, dainty, and very arresting.”
The words I have italicised explain some of our present troubles. The desire of the builder and of his client, for the “very arresting” house causes many of the incongruous additions to our landscape. Something might be done, as the President of the R.I.B.A. has suggested, to supply the builder with stock designs of good character, adapted to the needs of each locality; for, as I have noted before, the use of copybooks in the eighteenth century produced houses which if sometimes dull were at least dignified and often charming. But a process of very slow conversion will be necessary before we can hope to rid the public of this desire for “very arresting” buildings.
In the control of design would have to be included restrictions on colour and material so far as is reasonable, but it is quite impracticable nowadays to insist that a man building a house in a Yorkshire dale must employ the traditional stone walls and stone slates: it is doubtful if anybody will ever legally prevent him using the pink asbestos-cement tiles that clash so violently with the dull tones of the landscape. Similarly, it is idle to expect that a modern factory building should be erected to harmonise perfectly with rural surroundings: one can only ask that its designer may bear in mind the spirit of the place, and treat it as tenderly as circumstances permit. But we may reasonably press for further action in the abatement of factory smoke and domestic smoke, for that nuisance spreads forty or fifty miles away from industrial areas, and cities like Leicester—where smoke is hardly visible—are few and far between. The Coal Smoke Abatement Society has long worked towards this end, and its arguments are familiar to most people. Its supporters are convinced that smoky chimneys are wasteful as well as unhealthy and unpleasant. But it seems certain that we can eliminate a large part of our coal-smoke by utilising electric power far more extensively than we now do, by harnessing our rivers and by utilising all the waste water-power that is running from reservoirs to towns in aqueducts and pipes.
It has been suggested lately that much of the ugliness of colliery districts might be mitigated by judicious planting of trees on pit-banks. But smoke is one factor that prevents this, for it blackens and stunts all vegetation. Then the recent coal-strike showed that in any such emergency gleaners would soon be at work on the banks, grubbing for coal among the tree-roots. Lastly, even if trees did grow in such inhospitable soil, there is some doubt whether they would be tenderly treated by those for whose benefit they were planted.
It has been pointed out, earlier in this chapter, that Acts of Parliament have already empowered local authorities to remove unsightly hoardings and advertisements of all kinds, so that it only remains now for public opinion to press them to proceed in this admirable work. The author of Nuntius, in this series of essays, prophesies that advertising will not become more aggressive, adding that a sign which spoils a beautiful landscape is a very ineffective advertisement and hence that the “few existing” (sic) will soon disappear. Let us hope so. But one hesitates to accept his earlier statement that, if there were no hoardings on empty sites, these would become rubbish dumps. At all events, the recent action of the petrol combines in removing their hideous advertisements nearly all over the countryside represents a great victory for public opinion. On the whole, advertising is becoming more artistic, possibly more restrained. But house-agents continue to be terrible sinners in this respect. Close to my home is an avenue, still miraculously preserving its beauty, though surely doomed. But at the end of it is a group of seven enormous hoardings erected cheek-by-jowl by rival agents and completely spoiling a fine vista. I cannot see that any hardships would be inflicted on those Philistine touts if all agents’ boards were restricted to a maximum size of 2 square feet. Those who wished could still read them, others need not. There are many little details of design in village streets—the inn-signs, the lettering of street-names, the lamp-standards—capable of improvement on simple lines. In this connection one may mention the work of the Rural Industries Bureau which, among its other activities in encouraging the rustic craftsman, has endeavoured to find employment for the village blacksmith on simple wrought-iron accessories in common use and has prepared a selection of designs for his guidance.
Some day a genius may show us how to make wireless masts less unsightly, or perhaps we may be able to discard them altogether as science advances. But this innovation has not greatly spoiled our villages, nor does it seem probable that air travel will much affect the appearance of the countryside: a few more aerodromes perhaps, and on them, it is to be hoped, a more attractive type of building. The air lighthouse or beacon will spring up here and there; another subject for the ambitious young architect in competition.
But though it is now evident that a very great deal may be done for the preservation of rural England by the exercise of legislative powers which local authorities already possess, and by pressure on corporate bodies and private landowners of the best type, the ultimate success of the new crusade will depend on its ability to influence public opinion. Two kinds of opinion are involved, that of the country dwellers themselves, and that of the urban invaders of the countryside. Probably most young people now employed in remote villages and on farms would give their skin to get away from what they regard as the monotony of rural life, and one must sympathise with that view. The introduction of wireless and cinemas will make their existence less irksome, and the phenomenal increase of motor-bus facilities allows them to travel cheaply and frequently to the nearest town, with its shops and bright streets. But none of these things will teach them to prize the country, rather the reverse, for many of the films they see show them uglification at its worst—in the ricketty shacks of Western America. It might be possible to teach them to admire their own heritage by occasional lectures at the village institutes on town-planning and architecture; not the architecture of great cathedrals and of foreign buildings like the Parthenon, but the simple homely architecture of the village church, the village barn, and the village cottage. A competent lecturer accustomed to such an audience, avoiding like the plague all sentimental talk about the glory of country life, might explain the beauty of old bridges and mills, the simple skill of old craftsmen, in such a way that his hearers would be less anxious to substitute suburban vulgarities for everything that their rude forefathers of the hamlet had made. Recently there was organised, in my own village, an exhibition of drawings, engravings, maps, old documents, etc., illustrating the history and development of the district. It was visited by a large number of people, including many children, and undoubtedly it aroused much interest in things that had hitherto passed unnoticed.
The urban motorist, whether he travels in a Rolls-Royce or a charabanc, often provides an equally difficult problem. He may be a superior person of great wealth, who avoids the hackneyed resorts of trippers because he objects to the sight of beer-bottles and paper bags on the heather, but, as a humorous artist recently reminded us, he probably goes to a more secluded common and instructs his chauffeur to leave the champagne bottles and disembowelled lobsters under a gorse-bush there, for he has the soul and breeding of the tripper, and litter does not offend him. The beach X—— in Romney Marsh, already mentioned, was littered from end to end with newspapers, cigarette packets, and confectioners’ debris, when last I saw it.
Untidiness, ugliness, lack of respect for history and beauty, an insane craze for speed in getting from one futile pursuit to another, blatant advertisement, sordid commercialism—these are some of the things we have borrowed from American life to vulgarise our own. But when Americans come over to England, the thing that impresses them most—far more than anything we can do in our towns—is the harmony and peace of the English village and the English countryside. They feel in their bones that there we “have them beat.”
It is simply heart-breaking, to those of us who know how future uglification may be avoided and how much of the blundering of the past may be remedied, to see the process of deterioration steadily continuing. With more of brains and less of greed, more of public spirit and less of vested interests, rural England may yet be saved.