WORKSHOP PLUS LAND. 243 



The educational value of Mrs. G. F. Watts' 

 Hostel at Compton has extended to the villages 

 round about ; and many a lad showing taste 

 in designing and modelling in clay has been 

 taken from the technical and secondary schools 

 and kept at Mrs. Watts' Hostel and there 

 trained in the modelling room at Compton. 



Fascinating as are all these modern mani- 

 festations of revolt against machine-made 

 articles, interesting as is the tendency to fashion 

 things with the hand in country workshops, 

 and so humanise work, a great deal of it is 

 still bound to be beyond the scope of the 

 ordinary rural worker born in the country 

 cottage. His craftsmanship will belong to 

 what we may term agricultural life. Nearly 

 every farmer nowadays complains of the lack 

 of good thatchers, skilled woodmen, experi- 

 enced shepherds, capable hedgers and ditchers 

 and rick-builders, and of the few men left who 

 can cleave a thatching-rod or a hoop in the 

 woods, to say nothing of finding a competent 

 hurdler. Though I live in a woodland 

 district surrounded by 1000 acres of wood, 

 the only men apparently ca})able of making 

 wattles are two brothers who travel from 

 village to village. 



