The building of new cottages is not wholly dependent on
the energy of District Councils. A great deal can be done to help hy residents who care to enter the field. Examples are to be found in many parts of England where the ground for new houses, as for such buildings as village halls, has been given outright or " for a song " where the owner has been sympathetically approached. Some good illustrations may be seen in Oxfordshire in the neighbourhood of Bingham, where the ingenious and energetic editor of the Countryman (the green Quarterly that strikes deeper roots in each of its four seasons) has exercised his persuasive zeal. With the help of landowners, architects, the C.P.R.E. and the Act of 1926 the cost of good cottages may be reduced to a sum allowing an economic rent which the poor can pay. Even where most has been done, too little trouble has been taken (to my view, at any rate) to provide good gardens. They can be provided almost for nothing at any rate in the deep, deep country ; and a juxtaposed garden has a hundred times the value of a remote allotment.
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