192-2.] A Village History Exhibition. 621 



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Institutes of the countryside. If he succeeds in fanning the spark 

 of local patriotism in only one or two, in showing them that 

 they have traditions of family and parish to live up to, he will 

 not have laboured in vain. Though ostensibly intended as a 

 means for raising money for the Tillage Club, the promoter 

 hoped all along that the exhibition might have some of the 

 results which it has achieved. 



The constitution of the Village Clubs Association adopted by 

 the club in question, a constitution which insists upon freedom 

 from sectarian or party attachment, and from any element of 

 patronage — all of them frequent causes of disaster to similar 

 institutions in the past — greatly assisted in the promotion of the 

 exhibition. Working-men members of the Committee, as related 

 above, fetched the cannon to the village, others helped to bring 

 the trestles and boards from the Nonconformist Church, and set 

 them out. women members of the Committee arranged to supply 

 tea, which, sold at reasonable prices, yielded a profit of about 

 ne pound to the Club funds, and, in various ways, all helped 

 . nd none hindered . 



The parish is a purely agricultural one, the population being 

 about 700. In the beginning, probably in the 12th century, it 

 was part of the dense Forest of Anderida, occupied by English 

 swine-herds guarding the pannage-rights of Xorman Lords of 

 the Manor, by whom, most probably, the church was built. 

 Gradual clearini>f of the forest bv the swine-herds, as their 

 families grew, brought considerable tracts under the plough, and 

 the clearance of trees felled for fuel for the iron furnaces added 

 more to the area in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is worth 

 noting that the iron industry seems to have been a " foreign " 

 undertaking. The ironmasters were not of the soil, they came 

 from elsewhere and left when the furnaces were closed down. 

 There are no records to show that the natives ever left their agri- 

 culture to take part in it. Indeed, so far as the Registers tell us 

 anything, it would seem that those who were brought from the 

 furnace for burial in the churchyard, were strangers. The old 

 families stayed on their land, and their names remain, in some 

 cases, to this day. They grew hops (after their introduction in 

 1525) and wheat, " pods " and " otes," and continued to do so 

 till the railway came, about forty years ago. This caused a revolu- 

 tion in their agricultural methods, and started a new period in 

 the history of the parish. Thirty miles from London, with a 

 station at their gates, milk production and the lure of ready- 

 money once a month led to a complete change in agriculture and 



