I 



CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES. 441 



now, and how these things came to be. It provides the teacher with 

 material of unparalleled educational value and of absorbing interest to the 

 -child. But perhaps its greatest value is that it arouses an interest in the 

 countryside, which we should hope will be followed by a desire to keep 

 the best of what we have. For the countryside of England is rich beyond 

 all others in human and artistic interest. The long procession of Briton, 

 Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman has passed through our land, un- 

 broken and imhasting, on some of the very roads we still use, living 

 in some of the places where we live. Some of the generations have 

 added much to the countryside before they left it : the great roads made 

 by the Romans ; the clearing of the forest by the Saxons who founded 

 many of our villages and towns ; the wonderful churches of the 

 Normans and those who followed for the next 400 years ; the beautiful 

 houses and cottages of Jacobean times ; the mansions and gardens of 

 the eighteenth century ; many of these have come down to our own day 

 tended by the men who held them for a while and then passed them on 

 to us. 



And what are we doing with them ? Happily for the most part 

 looking after them well. The churches in particular are cherished and 

 safeguarded against the terrible churchwarden restorations that did so 

 much damage in the nineteenth century. Other important buildings, 

 listed by the Historical Commission, though not absolutely safe from 

 neglect or destruction, are at any rate looked after by someone. But 

 many beautiful relics of the days of the craftsmen, wonders in wood and 

 iron and stone, are not and perhaps cannot be fully protected, yet if 

 once lost they cannot be replaced. And unfortunately the civic con- 

 science is not always alert to look after these things. It is one of the 

 difficulties of democracy that the generations of voters are so short and 

 there is scarcely time to educate them. A curious apathy seems to come 

 over those who live with these wonderful works. We need only recall the 

 trouble about the beautiful old hospital at Croydon, the destruction of 

 fine old cottages at Stourbridge to make a new library, at Craven Arms, at 

 Storrington on the South Downs, at Box in Wiltshire, ^ and the astonish- 

 ing piece of vandalism begun but happily not completely perpetrated, 

 and, let us hope, not to be repeated, in taking down the fine old fifteenth- 

 century house at Lavenham to build it up somewhere else. It is diffi- 

 cult to believe that descendants of the great craftsmen who built that 

 wonderful Suffolk town have no appreciation of its beauty. Once these 

 things have gone they have passed for ever. Fortunately the Council of the 

 Royal Society of Arts is interesting itself in the matter, and let us hope, 

 in conjunction with the National Trust and the Society for the Protection 

 of Ancient Buildings, will be able to do something. The sympathetic 

 attitude of the Office of Works is well known. 



It is not only our fine old specimens of handicraft that are in danger. 

 The rapid spreading out of the towns into the country is leading to the 

 erection of houses in all sorts of places, worst of all in long narrow streaks 

 along the omnibus routes." Some people make two houses, one for the 



' The Times, July 6, 1926. 



" For some account of the harm being done in the countryside, see L. P. Abor- 

 crombie, ' Preservation of Rural England,' Hodder & Stougliton. 



