Derelict village of the 1920s

In the 1920s much of Barton Stacey was not well cared for - with serious consequences for the people of the village.

Background

In the 1920s Barton Stacey was owned by an eccentric landlord who had a particular point of view about taxation. This caused him to adopt an unusual approach to management of his land, affecting the livelihood of much of the village.

Extract from The Nation & Athenaeum, dated 6 July 1929

This travesty of a land system

Those who are satisfied with the workings of our land system might do worse than visit the little Hampshire village of Barton Stacey. They would find there what nothing but ocular evidence would allow them to believe. They would find farmhouses, farm cottages and 1,700 acres of good land laid waste more utterly than if an avenging army had passed over it. Approaching the village they would drive through mile after mile of derelict fields where forests of dock weeds rattle and hiss in the wind that spreads their seed over the neighbouring farms.

They would see cottages still inhabited where there are ragged holes in the thatched roofs, and the plaster is flaking off the walls; farm buildings in the last stages of decay, many already collapsed level with the ground that seems anxious to obliterate this insult to earth's fertility, and farmyards and the front gardens of farmhouses choked with weeds and nettles five feet high. They would see five farms, three farmhouses, farm cottages, and many blocks of buildings crumbling away to ruin. These have been abandoned for eight years now.

They might think it some accursed plague spot from which the inhabitants had fled away many years ago. Actually, the explanation is far simpler. The owner of this land is a little eccentric and has his own ideas about the tenancy system. He has, for instance, a strong antipathy to tithe-payment. At one time he had one of the best known and most progressive farmers in the county as tenant of 1,700 of his acres. Then the land prospered and grew food abundantly, and there was happiness and prosperity in the village. As it happens, I was a pupil on these farms then, and can testify from first-hand knowledge. But the tenant-farmer, much against his will, was compelled to give notice and leave the farm where he had been born because of the eccentricities of his landlord. His outgoing valuation was just upon £10,000. Largely through prolonged litigation and specialist enquiries, he eventually received just over £2,000 of this, after waiting two years for it.

After he went, disaster followed disaster in the village. Many acres were never let again, others to farmers of a type that misused the land abominably, then left owing money and have never been heard of since. There are many empty cottages in Barton Stacey now - a thing almost unknown in any other village. The inhabitants have been driven away to work elsewhere, and few remain in this haunt of desolation except those too old to start life anew in a happier district. Another 450 acres have gone derelict this year. Only one occupied farm on the estate now remains. It is rumoured that in the village that even that may be vacant soon.

The land is not bad. Forty years ago a poor farmer came to it and after farming it for thirty years died worth £40,000. Everywhere there are men eager and willing to take on small holdings of they could get them. But they are invariably told that no land is available. I have been standing inside the ruins of one of the old farmhouses where a prosperous farmer once lived and the laughter of young people once echoed. Now the ceilings have fallen through, the windows are broken, and the frames falling out; through the holes the wind comes in and blows the leaves round the crumbling rooms. To get in the front door I had to go almost on my hands and knees, for it is overgrown with creeper and weeds. I looked out on the tangled jungle that was once a garden and a tennis court, upon this stinking waste that is infesting the whole country round with weeds and vermin, and I could have cried, had not sudden anger filled me. Anger not much against the owner of it all, for eccentricity of this kind is a disease rather than a crime, but against the travesty of a system that allows such things to be and is so rotten that it cannot prevent them. For as the laws governing our agriculture stood, any owner of land may turn his property into a wilderness, throw hundreds out of employment, cause a huge sum of misery and loss to the community, and no one can hinder him.

During the war a temporary Act was passed that prevented such a waste of our resource. If, in the opinion of his fellow farmers, a man was grossly misusing his land, the privilege of cultivating it was transferred to another. This actually happened to one of the farms on this estate. At the end of the war the Act ceased to have effect, the land reverted to its owner, and it has been derelict ever since. This is not the only semi-derelict land in Britain. There is good land being wasted in many other counties. On the one hand, we have our huge bill for imported food and for paying the unemployed to do nothing, together with a widespread but unsatisfied demand for the opportunity of getting land to farm; on the other, acre upon acre of usable land that has been allowed to go to waste or is being grossly misused. The facts have been known to the late Government for years, and details of the Barton Stacey case have several times been brought to their notice. But they have done nothing. They have turned over in their sleep, muttered something about a special Act having to be passed to deal with such cases, and left the land to its desolation, the villagers to their poverty and unemployment. It seemed monstrous, as I stood in this tumbledown shell of a house which so recently was the hub of a thriving little community, and before my eyes, on the mildewy, indecent walls, I seemed to see in letters of fire the words: "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting; thy Kingdom is divided."