Five years of living in squalid parts of London has made me appreciate my rural upbringing. I grew up on a small farm on the borders of West Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire. It’s an area of outstanding natural beauty, a stretch of wooded undulations pocketed between the North and South Downs. The house is perched on one of these small hills, facing south east with a view across the flat expanse of East Sussex. On a clear day such as this, you can see the shadow of the Low Weald, the hills which divide Sussex and Kent, through the haze. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.
It is a quiet corner of England; but it has much more to offer than beauty. It lies within striking distance of London, with access to the road and rail networks that have linked the capital and Portsmouth for centuries. The nearest railway station is 7 miles away, and it takes an hour to Waterloo. The railway town benefits from the affluence of commuters and weekenders: artisanal shops, independent wine merchants and an array of restaurants and cafes. It should be twinned with Fulham.
But drive 7 miles in the other direction and you might be in another country. My parents are not farming at present, so the fields have been leant to a local farmer who grazes steers and sheep there to supplement his dairy works. Farming is a tough business, yet this man has expanded his demesne in recent years. It’s a great achievement when one considers the losses incurred during BSE and foot and mouth, to say nothing of years of low prices for livestock. I was given some sheep to rear as a birthday present many years ago; and I was amazed at how little the lambs fetched at auction, my expectations clouded by what supermarkets charge for a shoulder of lamb.
The earth is too poor for intensive arable farming; but some trees will grow anywhere. Our house is bordered by one of the local aristocrats’ timber plantations. It used to be said that each tree was worth a tenner, so we’re surrounded by thousands of pounds of chestnut and high quality redwoods and oak. Much of the wood is delivered to the independent timberworks half a mile away. The latest section of forest to have been farmed was last cleared, if memory serves, in the winter of 1992-3. We should call it Recession Copse.
This particular landowner has also invested in the leisure industry. Holiday cottages are dotted around the estate. And he has tried and failed to sell the family house (an Edwardian building) to a hotel group to rival the other major hotel in the area: the Spread Eagle, which is an old coaching inn favoured historically by dirty weekenders. A section of land has been developed into a golf course; and a long stretch of flat ground has been rolled into polo pitches. An international tournament is held here every year, sponsored for time immemorial by Veuve Clicquot.
The tournament attracts the smart crowd from London, who are then seduced by the local charm. Indeed, I saw this magazine’s chairman there last year, rubbing shoulders with Laurence Fox and Billie Piper – who bought a cottage in the area, although now they appear to be moving to LA. These magnificent events, the business they create and the prosperity they support, would not be possible without these people. There is a reason why almost every village here has a thriving pub at a time when the English pub is in decline, and it’s not just because we like the local ale.
This morning’s Times (£) reports that Sir Andrew Motion, the former poet laureate now chairing the Campaign to Protect Rural England, says that ‘townies’ with second homes should be taxed so that their gutting of rural communities ends. I’m not going to challenge his prescriptions here, because his underlying analysis, or misdiagnosis, is of more interest to my particular part of rural England.
My local village is Fernhurst. It’s a prosperous and comfortable place; but all is not quite well here. I drove through it on Thursday night and noticed that some of the 3 and 4 bedroom houses (built during the mid-to-late ‘90s) on the main street appeared to be deserted. The dull street lamp showed a couple of weather-beaten signs saying ‘For Sale’ and ‘To Let’.
Fernhurst is surprisingly big, with a large number of modern houses and bungalows set against the predominantly Georgian and early Victorian buildings dotted around the village green. Most villages in southern England have modern developments; but not to this extent. The reason for this is that ICI, the chemicals giant, opened a research facility here in 1945 to better understand commercial horticulture. It was a huge success, and the company was very popular. One of the local pubs has a photograph of a ‘pick your own’ event at the company’s greenhouses circa 1960.
ICI moved some divisional headquarters to Fernhurst between 1959 and 1975, as the business grew. Another local pub has a photograph of Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister, opening a new set of conference suites and offices in a development near the village in 1986.
The site supported more than 500 direct jobs through the ‘80s and withstood the recession of the early ‘90s. ICI’s inner strength was to be Fernhurst’s loss in the long run. The local history website says:
‘ICI Agrochemicals became Zeneca Agrochemicals in 1994. Five years later it merged with a Swiss agrochemical company to form Syngenta. The company officially left the site in December 2001, having sold Verdley Place for residential housing.’
This is but half the story of a ‘gutted’ community. ICI’s investment in the area was such that it ran its own cricket and football pitches and a bowling green, while also supporting such leisure facilities that existed in the village. I remember as a child watching games of football and cricket on ICI’s grounds. The pitches were set in a beautiful spot. I will drive by the overgrown remains of those grounds tomorrow on the way back from church. I always feel sombre after doing so.
Perhaps a great magnate will come to the polo (or perhaps on an assignation at the Eagle) this year, and, in a moment of abandon, decide that some of his business must be moved to this heaven-sent part of the world. I’m sure that his ‘townie’ workers would appreciate the change; and so, I imagine, might some of the country mice.
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