Crisply sealed, licked and pressed I hope this letter has found you and not lost itself in the jumble of a rural Royal Mail depot, or the elusive gap of a mailing van. Addressed to all whom it may concern, this is your fondly speaking village, to which you may have the pleasure of living in once you’ve sprawled from your London jobs and cubby holes to a thatched nook with ‘proper values’ in the country. Not much has changed here over the last six months and all remains well at the back end of September. Brown breasted sparrows find shelter in the brambled hedgerows and the Canada geese drop in on their migration back to the place where they were purpose-built to mate and nest. These seasonal Autumnal markers indicate the somewhat earlier transition of life. I am just wanting to touch base before we surely meet more quickly than expected.
There are 437 of us here, separately living between the Harrows and Leconfield estate cottages up the road, adjacent to the stone and mortar wall built by Napoleonic prisoners of war in the late 18th century. The boundary oak pavilion and cricket green overlook the South Downs Duncton Parish and the neighbouring chalk stream mills of Burton Park. The roll call of villages over decades has offered young talent to urban areas leaving the older and established residents. Families move away, the village school closes. We at least have a pub, church and hall. That said, based on the current climate others could be returning back in a somewhat different and unexpected way.
For the most part, it is the perceived rural idyll that consistently attracts the retired townsman who ‘envies the villager his certainties’. In Britain, he has regarded urban life as just a temporary necessity, as in Ronald Blythe’s Akenfeld, a village in Suffolk. Angela and Gerald (Pictured together) have lived here since 2004, living in the transformed post-office, closed and converted on the stroke of the millennium following a retired move from London. Organising meetings for the local walkers, supporting and helping to run the church, mens and women breakfast talks are something they know-how and have immersed themselves into the institutional structure of the village. Sat in their kept garden, with wilded Hollyhock lining the edges of a well-kept lawn next to pruned Roses, it is a comfort to know that this pattern and bliss of a steady tempo of village life is safe and well.
The purpose of this letter is to warmly invite you to reside and enjoy this space, which I have been so lucky to have lived and grown up in. When you do so, please touch lightly and respectfully. I am sure this will come in the coming months, as coronavirus pushes people seeking space and tranquility away to the countryside with their remote tertiary job roles behind a laptop screen. Be sure to engage in local life, contributing where you can. It is not simply a playground to accommodate London’s attitudes and habits (after-all this area is not Soho house in the sticks). Our village and local town already offers itself as a conduit pipe for urbanites and wave of younger professionals. The bunted pub garden offering priced craft pints or a £4 scotch egg outside the ‘Hungry Guest Deli’, is a little pastiche leading a trail away from the heart of our village community and the characters it outsources. Whilst visually appealing, the really beautiful patina is encapsulated in individuals such as the Bob’s of this world, (Pictured on the lawnmower) who has lived here his whole life, attending school, playing sports, bringing up a family and running the local menswear shop Allan’s in Petworth market square. With whom I had the task of mowing and keeping the cemetery trim and buff over lockdown!
It was always sadly a joke to point out the people from London who would never say hello on a walk. If they did talk, they’d only do so to ask a direction or a trivial question about ‘how far Petworth is from here?’. If an image of Steve Coogan in ‘The Trip’, unauthentically posing on a country hillside in his six hundred pound Colombia down jacket doesn’t come to mind, I’m not sure what would. To steward and preserve these areas and the features of modesty, kindness and character which are so integral to such uncontested spaces and people is crucial. Meanwhile, make sure to be on time for cream teas and a socially distant autumn garden trail next week. Can’t wait to see you all.
Best Wishes
Tillington (and Harry)