COUNTRY LIFE
A Gloucester Example
Community Councils, whose good work in Galloway was recently referred to, are doing not less notable service in Gloucestershire. They produce a modest but excellently illustrated quarterly, called Gloucestershire Countryside, price Is. 6d. It is not so elaborate or so good as the Sussex monthly magazine, but it is an even better model for other counties to follow. I cannot but think that every county, or at any rate group of counties, could support a paper of this sort, which acts as a focus for county patriotism, as a'Source of local information and as a rallying point for preservation. What an interesting paper "the Shires," for example, could support. They do not claim that proud name for nothing. So many of the interests of Devon and Cornwall are similar that a joint magazine for the two counties would be suitable and very valuable. Gloucestershire is of particular importance to England in general, and indeed to the world, because it embraces the very best of the Cotswold villages which are a species not found anywhere else in the world. They were made with supreme art out of the soil itself; and it is for this reason that everyone must regret the recent stripping of roofs for export from their native place. This is one of the dangers that the Community Council is attempting to fend off. Among the more unexpected devotees of the Cotswold scene is a community of exiled Germans, the Bruderhof, who have established a Christian community of a special sort at Ashton Keynes. This is by no means the first German community with a special creed that has established itself in England.
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