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14-03-2006, 12:40 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

On 14/3/06 11:31 am, in article ,
"Janet Baraclough" wrote:

The message
from Sacha contains these words:

That is truly maddening and just shows the old adage is true - "never go
back". Hard to manage that when you live so close by, though. My
grandparents' old house is on what was almost a lane when I was a child but
is now a busy main road.

My grandmother's family had an ancient farm on the banks of the Wye
called "Green Farm" after a local Green Man legend. As late as the 70's
the farmhouse and yard were virtually unchanged for centuries, cider
orchards, a courtyard of lopsided barns stacked to the roof with ancient
implements, a cider house etc. No electricity, sewage, piped water etc.
The last time I passed through the village, a developer had bought it,
separated and electric-fenced the immensely valuable fishing-rights,
cleared the buildings and erected a hideous red brick MacMansion with
black and gold security fencing, electronic gates, "Victorian
gaslights", and a block paviour driveway. And a poncy name on the gate;
"Badger's Crossing".

Oh dear, oh dear. We see much the same sort of thing in Jersey, I'm afraid.
Lovely old farmhouses built in granite, or the 'cod houses', are taken over
and gentrified and made into something they were never meant to be. Some
have 'House' or 'Maison' tacked on to make them appear grander than they
were ever built to be. Very soon, a lovely old farm whose fields march
alongside us, will be on the market and we reckon it will go for a million
or more. It has wonderful granite barns too and our one fear is that it
will go in that direction, too. English Heritage have been to look at it
and it is thought that they have said they won't countenance it being split
up and the barns built as several different 'dwellings'. However, as
farming is slowly sliding into oblivion, I can't see anyone buying it to
farm except perhaps as a sort of 'hobby farm'. It's tragic to look out of
our windows and see sheep grazing where once there were cows.
A couple of years ago we went back to Upshire in Essex, where Ray lived all
his life until 1981. He gazed in real horror at one farm he'd known which
had been tarted up to the nines. It had just the sort of gates you
describe, plastic windows and crowning horror, a huge ornate fountain with
some socking great simpering female standing there, pouring water out of an
urn but *outside* the gates, as if to point up the wealth of the new owners.
It was gilded and twiddled and "footballers' wived" to within an inch of its
poor life.
BTW, Ray's grandmother came from Ross on Wye but all we have on her is that
she was born Lydia Smith in about 1887. Not a lot to go on!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
)