A Village Regret All country people, especially perhaps the cottage
population, regret the disappearance of the great country house and its park. It added as nothing else could to many .amenities, and was essentially a common possession. Its progressive disappearance is being accelerated by a new influence. For example, a house that had been connected with one family for certainly 500 years was to the general grief recently sold ; but happily bought by a worthy successor, and his incoming was eagerly , expected, when, alas! the property was again upon the market. The new owner was refu,sed a permit to make the necessary repairs, and as these, I believe, included repairs to a damaged roof, he could not dispense with the alterations. Now there is a double danger. The house may fall into further disrepair, and the large and most productive walled garden go the way of the Garden of Eden. The urban mind, as Horace Plunkett used continually to say, is our greatest enemy ; and most countrymen will feel that the organisers at oppidan centres are quite unable to realise how valuable an attribute in the social life of the village is and has been the bigger country house. Even in the domain of sport its loss is great. If you do not believe, listen to cottage comments on some of the syndicate shoots, which descend from the towns at unpopular intervals, returning with their now valuable booty.
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