Insular towns and villages

[Cactus1982]

Has anyone else ever lived or worked on of these places? By insular I mean fearful, mistrustful and in some cases down right hostile to ‘outsiders’? There’s a large village about fifteen minutes outside of the town I live in that has always had a reputation for being like this. Apparently, in non Covid times if you as an outsider walked into a pub there it would go quiet and everyone would stare at you. I always took this with a pinch of salt until I started working there this last week. I swear that as I walk from my car down the street people slow down and stare intently at me as though I’ve got three heads. I know we are living in strange times, but this is very unnerving. I was also asked by someone how far I’d traveled to get there and when I told them they said ‘oooooh that’s a long way’ as though I’d come from Mars or somewhere. It’s not a long way, it’s a fifteen minute drive! I’d never actually have believed it had it not experienced it with my own eyes!

Are there any other places like this in the UK?

Salthouse? Cley?

I can think of a few places like this throughout Devon & Cornwall.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/in-essex-something-is-burning-1434174.html
Barling! See above

In a small town full of locals if you go in the pub bar you will be stared at. Visitors are expected to go in the pub lounge.

I grew up in a small town in Cumbria, it was exactly like that. Even now "outsiders" are treated with suspicion, their kids are blamed for any trouble that goes on and unless your family line goes back to the vikings / romans you're an interloper 😆

I live in a inner city which is a real dump of an area.The ind of place where as soon as you move in locals come knocking on your door asking you f you wold like to buy drugs or stolen goods.If you refuse you ae looked on with suspicion and are declared a potential 'grass'.
Fortunately I am the longest remaining resident in my street so am treated with respect and can prove trustworthy as I have never reported any of them even though I do not do drugs or buy stolen goods.
The area is full of immigrants who do not mix with the natives, and keep their own company.
If you visit the county in which I live, which consists of small villages and known as the ''country'' you are in a completely different world.
You stand out like a sore thumb in the pubs, if you walk down the main street you are looked on like you come from another planet.I could imagine if you went to live there you would never be accepted .These villages are predominantly white natives, the opposite to where I live which has a large immigrant population.
Rough as my neighbourhood is I would much rather live there than be an eternal outsider in one of those places.
I have quite a few ancestors who came from the country villages but moved into the city when young to get work.Whenever they returned to their birth place they were always welcomed back with open arms no matter how long they had been away from it.Some of their children though were treat as outsiders.An exception was my grandmother, who though born in the city would be always made welcome when visiting her father's relatives who would treat her as one of them, in contrast to my grandfather who would be the outsider as he had no blood connection with the place and never really enjoyed visiting.

I nearly bought a house in Ribchester lAst year

We moved to a nearby larger village instead

@ikeairgin

Harleston, Mendlsham, Framlingham, Bungay and the rest of south Norfolk and Suffolk borders, ime

I have lived in Fram,and now live near Bungay on the borders. Even the local FB pages are frosty to newcomers!

Keiss?

DP's village.

He stayed with his Mum when his father had a stroke and went to the pub for an escape from Coronation Street.

A man took exception to him looking 'weird' as he was wearing a leather jacket and a band t-shirt and told him to fuck off back to where he came from - at which point, the landlord told him that as DP had been born there and was in the same class at school, so his harasser should think about fucking off back to the next village along where he came from as he was more of an outsider than DP would ever be, having only lived in DP's village for 27 years.

Leicestershire. Large, prosperous village, not far from Leicester. I grew up in the country myself, but I’d never lived anywhere so insular. It wasn’t a ‘total silence when you walked into the pub’ situation, just an incredibly narrow outlook — no one who hadn’t always lived there really existed. No one interested in things, places or people not in the immediate vicinity really existed. No one with foreign friends, a ‘strange’ job, or who didn’t spend their money on understandable things really existed. Having a foreign accent, renting a house, being WOHM, having lived overseas, giving any intimation you might not still be living in the village at your death — all deeply suspicious.

I’m an open-minded person, and I did everything recommended — had child in baby groups, preschool, then village school, I volunteered, got involved in local events, ran a popular club, went to the pub, supported local businesses, litter-picked, campaigned for the retention of the bus service etc etc. After eight years we left.

This is why Brexit happened. If you can’t look at somewhere more than 5 miles away without thinking ‘foreign’ how would you understand being part of a massive trade bloc?

@HopeClearwater

This is why Brexit happened. If you can’t look at somewhere more than 5 miles away without thinking ‘foreign’ how would you understand being part of a massive trade bloc?

It’s true that watching the Parish Council in action made me understand something about the functioning of the British Empire. And it was such a Tory safe seat the tactical voting website more or less said ‘Dream on, dearie.’

I still have nightmares I’m back there.

I only came on here to see the inevitable 'they only started speaking welsh when I walked in'
Chances are they were speaking welsh before you walked in!!

Girten in Cambridge was terrible for this when I lived there in the 90s

Girton*

@Heartofglass12345

I only came on here to see the inevitable 'they only started speaking welsh when I walked in' Chances are they were speaking welsh before you walked in!!

Well, yeah! I'd love to know how these folk know what people are saying inside a building when they're still outside of it! That's some serious skills

I know someone from wales. When she is talking to people she knows who are welsh, they might talk to her in welsh and she responds in English. Or theres a mix. It is because she hasnt lived in Wales for a couple of decades and her welsh is now patchy.

This is 'why Brexit', basically.

There is an astonishingly degree of insularity in Britain.

Does anyone remember a Time Team or similar programme on telly a decade or more ago, where the filming budget allegedly had done spare cash so decided to see if any village old-timers would do a DNA test, in relation to the DNA of the Iron Age bodies they'd dug up?

You're ahead of me here, aren't you? 😂

@Thisbastardcomputer

I went to Wales and it was like this, started speaking in Welsh when they realised I was English

God, does that still go on?

My mum (Cornish) vowed never to return to South Wales after a camping holiday on The Gower literally 50 years ago! Hostile natives bunkered down in a nasty little shop with steel mesh over every window and door, instantly turning from English to Welsh as we walked in.

Clacton

@sunflowersandbuttercups

I've been somewhere in Australia like that!

A pub with rooms in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road. Just my mum and I - we walked in and the whole place fell silent, everyone turned and gawped at us

They were all really friendly but my mum said afterwards she was actually quite scared being a lone woman with a child (I was about 14-15 years old at the time).

To be fair, I'm not at all surprised. But they most probably turned and stared in curiosity, not hostility! Hence, then, 'really friendly'.

I've found that in outback Australian pubs, too!

@Zancah it's hilarious!
People wouldn't go to Spain and complain that people were speaking Spanish would they lol

South Wales isn't even predominantly welsh, I can only speak a bit of welsh.

How does your mum know they were speaking English before she walked in? Could she hear them?

It's a welsh conspiracy 

Brockhampton in Hereford spooked me. I went to visit the arts and crafts church and then left as fast as I could. It just felt bloody odd.

Not recently but when we moved to a kent village and went to village pub for the first time they literally stopped talking and stared as we walked in, you could have heard a pin drop , the locals had spread themselves out one person per table so we quietly shuffled away from cosy bar with inglenook to the grim cold family room at the back ! Village did eventually accept us, having young dc helped but pub was always very clicky , mainly frequented by older men supping pints.
The other place it regularly happened was west Wales where mil lives, people did stop and stare at us, particularly when dh had a smart company car, now we have a scruffy car they dont stare as much but they definitely spot you're english from a mile off.