CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES. 671 



form, and the fields are divided by bushy hedges where the natural 

 vegetation is preserved. The preference displayed by cultured Englishmen 

 during the eighteenth century for the scenery of prosperous agriculture was 

 due in part to a shrinking from sterner aspects, but we have only to imagine 

 the countryside as it was on the eve of nineteenth-century building 

 (hurried, haphazard and largely in staring brick and poor slate) to realise 

 that rural England of the eighteenth century would have held us enchanted 

 by the perfection of its repose. House building since the great war has 

 been even more rapid than in the nineteenth century. It is, as Sir John 

 Russell remarked at a meeting of this Conference, of a curiously mixed 

 kind. The best houses are excellent in form, tone and colour, and take 

 their place in the landscape more quietly than the late-Victorian villa. 

 The worst hold the eye against its will by harsh form and staring colour, 

 and, in many cases, by the conspicuousness of a site chosen for the sake of 

 a wide prospect. While deploring such philistinism let us not forget that 

 the Englishman's fondness for trees and love of privacy will largely 

 remedy the present state of things. Experience tells us that in twenty 

 years the new villa will be almost hidden in a grove, even though the view 

 from the windows be partly screened. 



In the great avenues of a well-planned city we have the stately effect 

 of the vista, in many English hamlets and village streets the subtle charm 

 of grouping which conforms spontaneously to the winding course of the 

 valley's water-way, as beneath the Berkshire downs, on the Cotswolds and 

 in the coombs of Devon. The preservation of this picturesque inheritance 

 is fortunately made easier by the revenue derived from the motor industry 

 which provides funds for the by-pass required for acceleration of traffic. 



The winding country lane with over-arching trees has long been a 

 cherished possession of English scenery, in summer a corridor of cool 

 green shade, in autumn an avenue of golden light, but we have never had 

 Napoleonic roads bordered by league-long avenues and, as Professor 

 Patrick Abercrombie has pointed out, the requirements of motor traffic 

 provide the occasion for introducing this new element of beauty. 



In the eighteenth century the traveller crossing England passed 

 through a string of villages and large and small towns. Railways were, 

 however, laid out so as to avoid villages and many of the smaller towns, 

 so that the traveller Of the nineteenth century rolled peacefully through 

 mile after mile of verdant fields. The motorist of the twentieth century 

 returning to the main roads receives a very different impression of the 

 countryside, and consequently overestimates the recent encroachment on 

 rural England. 



If we leave the main motoring roads and also reject the cheapened 

 charms of certain spectacular features of scenery, we find large blocks of 

 agricultural England in which scenery is unaffected by recent occurrences. 

 I lately visited a line of twelve country parishes lying on the slope of the 

 West Berkshire downs overlooking the Vale of White Horse, places which 

 I knew intimately five-and-thirty years ago and had not seen since. There 

 was no perceptible change in the lay-out of the fields, in the operations of 

 agriculture, or in the architectural appearance of the villages. The light 

 car had replaced the dog-cart upon the roads, otherwise all objects were 

 as a generation since. One attribute of rusticity was, however, impaired, 

 that of seclusion ; the price paid for the rapidity and ease of access by car. 



