Talking to a local couple about the history of the plain (she did more talking than he did) they showed me large black and white photographs dating from the 1940s. Among the views of overweight prize pigs, lovingly-groomed shire horses, and well-maintained traction engines, was an aerial view of a large farm. The photograph had been taken just after the war (probably by a reconnaissance team, since the photograph displayed a military precision in the way in which everything was lined up and focussed).
I was intrigued by this photograph, as it illustrated a big farm complex and a labour-intensive way of life that has entirely disappeared from rural life. I took my own photograph of the photograph (see below). Asking about the farm the woman told me: “It’s all gone now. It used to be in that field opposite the Red Lion. There’s nothing there now.”
A neighbour, a stout elderly lady, painfully supported by a walking stick (possibly she had trouble with her hip) said: “Gwen used to live there, until she got married. Then no-one would live there, and gradually the buildings fell down. And then it was demolished.”
On the way out of the village I stopped at the Red Lion and looked over to the wide empty field. There was an air of Ozymandias in the way in which the vanished farm had completely ceased to exist.
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away (except that the ground was alluvial silt, not sand)
I have an irrational fear that this will happen to my house.
Aerial view of the vanished farm c1946
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