7 OCTOBER 1949, Page 16

Small Villages

SIR,—The trouble with Lctcombe Bassett is this: all our planners are urban-minded, and they are forcing unwanted urbanities on our country- side. Sewers are not seen, but concrete roads with cement kerbstones and hideous black tarmac paths arc only too visible in all our old villages, while the too-efficient trimming of our verges has robbed us of nearly all our summer wild flowers.

I spent my boyhood in a remote Hampshire village where we lived a happy, cleanly and healthy life without any drains whatever. After living all my grown-up life in a village as a country doctor I can see no need of sewer drainage from the point of view of health ; typhoid fever being unknown.

Our planners might remember Q's lines: " Something quite recent now : ' Drainage aint decent' now ; Damme when was it ? I've known If you please Old tenants, better ones,

Crimean veterans—

Never heard they required W.C.'s."

Chapel Row, Bucklebury, Berks.