HOUSE-BARGAINS FOR LONDONERS.
ONE of the most singular features of the depression from which the landed interest in England is suffering is the refusal of people of small means to turn it to their
benefit. When other useful commodities — and, whatever people may say, land is a useful commodity—fall greatly in price, there are always hundreds of people ready and eager to avail themselves of the chance, and to get a bargain while they can. In land alone, extraordinary bargains seem to have no attractive force whatever. But perhaps it will be said that these so-called land-bargains are not bargains, and that this is why no one avails himself of them. Possibly cheap land does not offer bargains from the point of view of cultivation, but there are other uses for land than farming ; and if these uses are considered, we believe that it can be shown that there are hundreds—nay, thousands—of neglected bargains to be had in England at this moment.
Such matters, however, cannot be considered in the abstract and the vague. Let us try to be specific. It will be admitted on all hands that there are hundreds of young men in business in London, recently married, and with two or three children, with incomes of from £500 to £600 a year, who are extremely anxious to house themselves cheaply, and who, finding that living in London on a narrow income means never getting away from the smoke except for a month in the year, would like that cheap housing to be done in the country. They find that in London, in a decent neighbourhood, they cannot get a good house of sufficient size for less than £150 a year, including rates and taxes. But that is a horribly big slice out of £500 a year. It means that all the small luxuries and amenities of life have to be sacrificed in order to provide house accommodation, and house accommodation which gives nothing but walls and roof. In order to free their incomes from this incubus, there are plenty of men who would willingly travel an hour by train or even a little more. At present they do not go into the country because they find that the hiring a house in the country, plus the season-ticket, brings the outlay nearly up to the old figure.
Now our contention is that those who would like to go into the country if they could set free a hundred a year, but not unless, are overlooking a great many bargains offered them by the fall in price of English land. We believe we can show that if they will buy a farm and live in Essex—one of the most unjustly unpopular counties in England; it is full of fine oaks and picturesque villages—and if the husband will ride to the station on a bicycle, an arrangement as healthy as it is economical, the young couple of our thought may bring their children up in a garden, and may enjoy a great many country pleasures on a modest scale, and, most important of all, may set free a hundred a year of income, and so make life far easier. Ah, but,' the objector will say, you are going to set the unfortunate young people at amateur farming, and that means the bankruptcy-court in three years.' Not a bit of it. We mean that they shall buy and live on an Essex farm, but by no means farm it. Let us take an example. A land-agent's list which lies before us gives the following particulars of a farm in Essex which is five minutes' walk from a village, one mile from church, two and a quarter miles from a station, and twenty-one miles from London. The farm contains about seven acres of land, of which one acre is garden, " well-
stocked with choice young fruit-trees, and one acre of orchard planted with choice fruit-trees about seven years old, and the remainder grass-land with very extensive poultry-houses and run well wired-in." The house is described as a pretty bungalow with small entrance-hall, dining-room, drawing- room, kitchen, wash-house, and four bedrooms ; good water. supply, with pump in wash-house; two-stall stable, coach- house with loft over, workshop, piggeries, and fowl-house, large flower-garden and tennis-court. What is the price of this house, which, making all deductions for the enthusiasm of the land-agent's catalogue, is clearly a possible residence for a man with a family who has to work in London P The fact that it is only twenty-one miles from London may be taken as proof that it is possible to reach London in at the very most an hour and a half. The price is £575 freehold. But people always ask a little more than they intend to take. Let us assume, therefore, that Mr. Brown-Jones will get it for £550. Now, most married people of the £500-a-year class, have at least £1,000 in settlement. Let us assume that the Brown-Joneses are not exceptions, and that as in almost all such cases the purchase of a house to live in is within the terms of the settlement, and that the £500 is now invested at 3 per cent. Then it will cost the Brown-Joneses £15 a year to buy the farm. But let us assume that £100 will have to be spent on the house to put it into good order, and another £100 to build a good - sized iron library or drawing-room, with a good bedroom and dressing-room over. That can be done by any firm engaged in the iron-buildings trade. This will increase the annual cost of the house to £21, but will make a thoroughly good house of it. The tithe is said to be £1 ls., and the rates low,—say, another £2. Say, also, that repairs will be £6 a year, in spite of the putting in order. This will make the annual cost of the house £30 a year. What is to be done with the five acres of grass which is not garden or orchard? The Brown- Joneses must certainly not farm it. As it is only five minutes from a village, it is almost incredible that they would not be able to let off the five acres for at least £5 a year either as allotment or as accommodation land. Let us, however, assume the worst, and consider that it is to be left to itself just as a piece of common is,—to run wild and grow black- berries. At any rate, it will give Brown-Jones a little diversion in the way of rabbit-shooting. Five or six acres is not a sporting estate, but for all that, a man may have a good deal of fun on five acres on summer evenings potting rabbits with a rook-rifle. Let us assume, then, the Brown-Joneses make nothing out of their five acres, but keep them as a miniature sporting estate. How about the garden P Unless they are very bad managers, they can keep a labouring gardener at 17s. a week, and make half his wages out of vegetables and poultry. Let us, however, assume that they are afraid to do this, and also afraid to keep a pony and trap, and that they merely get a jobbing-gardener in twice a week in spring and summer to keep the garden tidy and grow a few flowers and cabbages. This will not cost them more than £10 a year. Their farmhouse, then, will cost them but £40 a year. Brown-Jones will, as we have said, be a cyclist—every healthy man is that, or can be that—and will go to the station on his machine. Now his annual season-ticket—second class, at a place twenty miles from London—will not cost him £10 more than he spends in London on locomotion. His omnibus or underground to the City costs him at the very least 6d. a day, or 3s. 6d. a week, or, say, £5 a year, and this he will save, though he spends £15 on a season-ticket. Hence, housing himself in Essex will cost in all £50 a year. But he was spending £150 in London on rent and rates. Therefore by going into the country and buying a farm he will clear £100 a year. Of course many men and women will say that banish- ment to Essex is not worth that. These will stick to London. Many others, on the other hand, will say that the boredom of the country is infinitely preferable to the financial worries from which they will be saved by an extra £100 a year to spend or save. There are, however, those who will not merely endure the country in order to get clear of money worries, but will positively revel in the country and its pursuits, who will find keeping hens, cultivating the garden, and potting at the rabbits aforesaid, the most delightful things in the world. It must not be supposed that the example we have given is an exception,—a luaus naturm. The catalogue already quoted from gives another instance quite
as suitable to the purposes of the Brown-Joneses. The farm is in Essex. It is ten minutes' walk from a village, three- quarters of a mile from a church, two and a half miles from a station, three miles from a town, and twenty-two miles from London. There are eight acres of land, of which seven and a half acres are meadow ; the cottage, containing four rooms, garden and well of water with pump, stable, cart-sheds, cow-house for four cows, two pigsties, and poultry-houses, built within the last three years, and described as in good order. The price freehold is only £285. Tithes, £148. Rates and taxes £1 a year. This means, supposing that the house is actually sold for £275, that the annual cost will be, with rates and taxes, say, £11. But the Brown-Joneses will have to spend more on building to make the cottage roomy enough. They will want an iron building with two sitting-rooms on the ground-floor, and, say, three bedrooms and a dressing-room over, and this will cost about £300. This will bring their annual charge up to £20 a year, and thus they will " sit " at about the same rate as in the last example.
We have given two, but we might have given a dozen examples of how people intent on housing themselves cheaply, might pick up bargains in Essex. There is, however, another class to whom Essex bargains ought to appeal,—the class of more or less prosperous professional and business men who want a cheap country-box for the summer. Such people do not want a place to live in all the year round, but a place to turn their families into cheaply from June to September, and to which they can themselves run down from Saturday till Monday at busy times, and for a month or a fortnight during slack times. Now Essex offers just the cheap opportunities for villeggiatura which are desired by the men with large families and from £1,000 to £2,000 a year. Here is a little estate in Essex of 100 acres, with a good house on it and stable, to be sold for £850,—" less than the cost" says the catalogue, "of erecting the house and premises twenty-five years ago." That would be an ideal place for a man fond of a little shooting, and with a family of boys. He would not, of course, attempt to farm, but would let the land become a game-preserve, a wild park on a small scale, which would afford a great deal of rough sport. There might not be much killing, but a great deal of health and amusement. But this health and amusement and country lodgings is to be got for, say, about £25 a year. Double this for extras, and even then it is less than many men of the £2,000-a-year class spend on going to the seaside for a month. Of course there is the care- taking of the house in the winter, but this in most country places is easy to manage. A respectable couple can be got without difficulty to warm themselves at your coal, and be paid five shillings a week in addition. The example we have just taken of a villeggiatura bargain, is, however, rather an ambitions one. The thing could be done as well on either of the farms we have marked out for the Brown-Joneses, and need not cost, in that case, more than £30 a year, for people who run down for the summer months want less house-room than the winter tenants. A village carpenter can for £10 make a good barn into a charming summer sitting-room or young men's shake-down dormitory, especially in a county like Essex, where the rainfall in the summer is by no means excessive. When, we do not know, but some day, we feel sure, people will realise the bargains that are going in Essex, and will jump at them. The tendency towards living out of London, at any rate during the summer, added to the cheap price of Essex farms, and the fact that the unpopularity of Essex is fictitious, makes that a certainty. It only wants a few pioneers, the fashion will be set and followed, and the thing will be done. When the change has taken place, the settlers will swear that Essex is the prettiest county in England. It is not that of course, though it is well timbered, but at any rate it is flat enough in many parts to prove a paradise for cyclists.
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