Country Life
The Open Air
Secluded in a fold of the Avon, at the edge of an ancient and lovely village street, flourishes a homestead that is also a college, though this last word fits it badly ; for no other college within Europe is quite like it. Indeed, no other centre of rural culture is quite like it, even in Scandinavia, where alone in the world flourishes a peasantry that is capable on its own initiative of exercising an influence on the affairs and thought of the nation. This homestead, this college, is ATOnCrOft, a croft by the Avon, and was founded and in some measure endowed (by Mr. Cadbury) in order to give at least glimpse of liberal education to the sons of the agricultural labourer. They come there straight from traffic on the land at ages that vary from eighteen to near forty ; and for the better part of a year learn, amid the technique of their craft, what literature and history may mean and what the world thinks.
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