* * * * Local Art In older days the
Rnglish village came very near the Aristotelian ideal of self-sufficiency. It could thatch its own stacks or houses, find its own water and dig its own wells, make many of its own tools and repair all of them. It only used those materials natural to the locality : thatched with reeds in Norfolk, with flax here and there in Suffolk, with heather by the commons, and with rye specially grown for the purpose in the South-West, and roofed with local stone in the Cotswolds. Out of such craftsmanship sprang our excellence, if not at one time pre-eminence, in the domestic art of furniture and pottery. Happily our architects today are developing a strong habit on behalf of the local material. A good example is the reed thatch on the latest buildings at Gresham's School, Holt, and the growing excellence of local bricks and hand-made tiles.
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