Reconstructing the Rural Community: Village Halls and the National Council of Social Service, 1919 to 1939

Abstract

Although rural leisure in the half-century before the First World War is an under-researched subject, its most striking features seem to have been (at least according to the existing historiography) that it was dominated by the gentry and clergy, and restricted both in scope and quantity. The robust rural popular culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had come under increasing pressure from gentry and clerical attempts to reform and sanitise it, initially through evangelical organisations such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice in the 1790s, but by the 1840s on a broad front due to the middle-class vogue for promoting ‘rational recreation’. Partly as a result of this, many popular pastimes either fell into disuse or became emptied of much of their former spontaneity in the second half of the century, a commonly cited example of the former being cock-fighting and of the latter maypole-dancing. In their place came carefully marshalled dinners and prize-givings sponsored by the gentry and clergy. On these occasions the labourers (and sometimes their families too) were sat down at trestle tables in some appropriate venue, often the squire's park, and edifying speeches were made by representatives of local landed society. The role of the rural workforce in all this was entirely passive, except for one or two labourers who might be singled out to give a speech of gratitude to the presiding landowner for his beneficence, and the ritual ‘loyal toasts’.

The Rise and Decline of Village Reading Rooms

“…There was also the strongly contrasting example of the democratic organisation of the village halls, which were springing up at this time. 113 Slowly but surely, the pre-war patriarchal system of squire and peasant became a thing of the past. There is a fine line between leadership and dictatorship, and although paternalism was still active in the countryside, it gradually gave way to the people's wish for self-government, as society in general moved towards full democracy.…”

“…. Jeremy Burchardt suggests that 'stemming the decline of the rural population was the main motive for their establishment', 7 but the original intentions were also bound up with contemporary attitudes to philanthropy, recreation and self-help. Though I have chess-boards, &c., in the readingroom, some of the young men say they would rather give 2d.…”

Squire and Community: T.G. Dixon at Holton-le-Moor, 1906–1937

“…55 But his more pioneering achievement was the provision of the Moot Hall. Before 1914 true village halls, as distinct from parish halls or workingmen's institutes, were a rarity, 56 and it is not surprising that at first the Moot Hall was not properly keyed into the institutional structure of the parish. But when, at the end of the First World War, that structure matured, the ground had already been laid and the building put in place.…”