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Original poster

Is this village life?

193 replies

Hocuspocusnonsense · 19/04/2023 10:45

I’ve moved from London to a village in Surrey to raise a family. I have 3 young children

The village has a duck pond so I took my children to look at the ducks and an elderly couple spoke to me and my children, all nice and friendly until they asked if I’ve always lived in the village and I said no I’ve moved here from London, to which he replied ‘We’re sick of you Londoners moving here’ and walked off.

I joined the local toddler group and it quickly became apparent that everyone knew each other, most had grown up in the village, went to school together etc and no one was interested in chatting because they had their friends there.

Since being at the local village school I have lost count of how many times I’ve been asked which road I live in....I know it’s to size up how much my house is worth. And to top it off just before the Easter hols I had a mum ask me in front of another mum “Do you receive the holiday club vouchers, you’re low income aren’t you?” I was really taken aback. I actually have a good career not that I broadcast it (earn £40k) but I drive a Fiat and my car is 9 years old, most mums drive newer, bigger beast cars.

Is this normal village life?

OP posts:
lljkk · 20/04/2023 07:22

ha! 200 is a big primary school in rural Norfolk. Need to get <50 to call it small here.

Maybe London-reach villages are sharp-elbowed snobbery aflicted? In my provincial backwater you'd be viewed as a curiousity not an invader. Half the elderly population moved here after retirement so they can't criticise. Nobody would ask how much your house cost ime.

Hensister · 20/04/2023 07:25

RenoDakota · 19/04/2023 23:21

I think the biggest problem you will have with that (beautiful) place is the hordes of visitors and location-spotters.
I know people who live there and have never heard of cliques or anti-incomer feeling.

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Good to know! I know it gets so many tourists in summer and I thought a lot of Londoners would have probably moved there during lockdown. I didn’t realise it was so easy to guess the name through what I had written 🤣

AncientToaster · 20/04/2023 07:30

It is a bit like that where I grew up because there was a huge influx of Londoners in lockdown. It’s not Cornwall but a similar sort of place. I think that couple just didn’t have a filter so they vocalised it . I know some of my relatives and friends don’t like it but they would not say anything. There was already a problem with second hime owners where I grew up.

RenoDakota · 20/04/2023 08:49

Hensister · 20/04/2023 07:25

Good to know! I know it gets so many tourists in summer and I thought a lot of Londoners would have probably moved there during lockdown. I didn’t realise it was so easy to guess the name through what I had written 🤣

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I recognised it because I used to live in one of the nearby villages. Hope you really enjoy living in such a beautiful part of the world! Beautiful scenery and walks all around and great country pubs etc x

Hensister · 20/04/2023 09:00

RenoDakota · 20/04/2023 08:49

I recognised it because I used to live in one of the nearby villages. Hope you really enjoy living in such a beautiful part of the world! Beautiful scenery and walks all around and great country pubs etc x

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Where did you move to? Yes loving it and great for our toddler! Currently got ourselves some rescue chickens although a bit scared of them 🤣 but enjoying the lovely fresh eggs!

NeonRaptor · 20/04/2023 09:07

This maybe village life (I've never lived in a village so have no experience) but this also reflects my experience in a small city (midlands - surrounded by countryside and not well connected)

Anyway my dd attends her local school and it seems many parents know each other from old and probably attended the school and the connected secondary. The relations are almost incestuous with large families, blended families etc. My dd has 5 cousins in her year group.

I've has this experience in toddler groups ans baby groups whereby women in large friendship groups seem to procreate at the same time and then all go to the same groups and take it over and aren't interested in making new friends.

I'm not really local ( moved a lot when I was younger) so I have no history and can feel very left out and I feel it on behalf of my dd too. Many of her school friends seemed to have been friends since birth.

I think some places are just small in mind and people don't seem to leave and just stay in the same routine and life.

I hope things get better for you OP. I accept things as they are. I have a dmall group of friends who are lovely- keep out of the goings on of the old timers - and I know my dd has friends and will make friends in her life on her own terms not just because the mums went to school together.

ejbaxa · 20/04/2023 09:12

When the twats at the duck pond said that, you needed to get right back at them and say something like: goodness me, how rude! Don’t let people speak to you like it.

your kids will make friends fine at school - the kids don’t give a shit who’s been in the village the longest

id try to steer clear of it all and just let your kids make friends when the time comes.

don’t engage with any housing/money issues.

thecatsthecats · 20/04/2023 09:15

I think people are the same everywhere, really, except that cities have more anonymity.

I find people from the local "nice" suburb horrifically insular, but it's part of a major city nonetheless.

mast0650 · 20/04/2023 10:59

If there is no one there who was born there then they have all been forced out.

Yes and no. There are people I know who were born here (or very nearby) , but they have almost always lived somewhere else first, rather than just staying. Not surprising - it's a pricey village so most people will be university educated and most people while they are young would work and live in a city (normally London) before coming back here.

It's possible there is a group of people who stayed here and never left who I don't know as they don't mix with the rest of us. But I suspect it would be very very small.

I think the same will happen with the current generation of kids. They will go away first, then some will choose to come back once they are at the right stage of life. It's not somewhere most people would choose to live in their 20s!

Addymontgomeryfan · 20/04/2023 12:32

I grew up in a small village, moved away to a city, but then moved back to the village approx 6 years ago.

The village has definitely changed in the time I was away, my parents said it had but now living there I can see exactly what they mean.

It's not in the way you are experiencing though. Recently there was a huge amount of anger on the village Facebook page about a proposed housing development. The comments were largely from people saying they had moved to the village because it was small and peaceful and they wanted to move away from towns and cities.

They all failed to see that the housing development was needed because others wanted to do the same, therefore more housing was needed.

Villages are strange at times.

MintJulia · 20/04/2023 12:46

No, that's not village life - I'm in Hampshire, not Surrey, but pretty close. We've always been welcomed and DS had no issues at the local primary school.

Our village has everything from a 15 bed manor with acres of land through to housing association 1 bed flats. Mine is towards the lower end of the scale. In 12 years I've had one comment about why I don't buy somewhere smaller because it would be easier to heat (we have a spare bedroom). No-one has every asked me if I'm an incomer (my accent is bland southern) or said anything about my income or my car. If they did, I'd either laugh it off or give a chilly stare, and move on.

But wherever you are, some people are curious and some are rude. Don't take it personally. I'm sure they treat everyone the same.

superplumb · 20/04/2023 13:02

It sounds awful. What stuck up sods. I'd either try and find normal people or I'd leave. Not sure I'd want my children around people like them

NameChangingIsMySuperPower · 20/04/2023 16:06

It's not Chiddingfold is it? I've got a friend that used to live there (though, this was quite a few years ago now) and said a few similar things about it.

Lalalalala555 · 20/04/2023 17:16

Its worse where I grew up I think.
I went to a primary school that was in the nearest village. The adults there wouldn't let kids from outside that village compete with kids in the village on sports day. There were two separate races.
This poor kid, maybe 7?, had to run on a race on his own.

People were called incomers. People were always nosy. If you're not born there, you are treated with a bit of hostility. Luckily over time it reduces but after 20+ years my parents are still called incomers.
Luckily there are other people that moved to the area that were more welcoming. And some of the locals were nice

When I grew up and worked in a coffee shop, one of the nearest ones to where I lived. A man there who was sort of manager of the coffee shop asked me where I was from and if I was local. I said yes, and where I live is about 6 miles away.
He said wow that's a long way. I could literally walk home after work.

But in that region, if something is not from the same valley, then its an outsider. Local is very very small scale meaning.

Another thing when there was a pta meeting and someone said one of the ladies was local. And she was adament she wasn't local. She lived 7 miles away nearer the nearest town.

..
This is all north west England. I'm not sure what the southern England culture is.

Lalalalala555 · 20/04/2023 17:17

I grew up there since when I was 2, but yet over 30 years later and I still don't feel like I'd be accepted as a local. I am still an incomer. And so I don't really feel I have an identity. I feel like the landscape is home. But not the people, not the culture.

ImagineImagine · 20/04/2023 18:16

Yes that’s village life. I moved to a village 25 miles from my home town ( big town) 15 years ago. I’m sociable and friendly but have struggled to make friends, as most people have known each other their full lives. I’ve made a few friendly acquaintances who I’ll chat to if I meet them. But my real friends are 25 miles away, so I just drive back and forth. I’m hoping to move to a town 5 miles away. Hopefully that will be better. 🤞☘️

LifesTooShortForYourNonsense · 20/04/2023 18:28

Yup, completely normal for everyone to be thinking those things, normally kept in and muttered about behind your back though!

l live a couple of miles outside a village ( kids went to the primary) and get treated like an outsider 😆

DurdleLau · 20/04/2023 19:08

I’d say it is, but only because I’ve had a similar experience! I grew up in Manchester, all the people I knew were friendly but you could still retain some anonymity, people knew the boundary of their garden and respected your privacy. I moved to a small village in Gloucestershire 15 years ago, and I must say now that I’ve got to know a lot of the people here it’s really changed my opinion of rural/semi rural village life. They are mostly either friends from birth or are related. They will chat to you but only to find out what you do for a living/which house you live in and try and get you talking about other people in the village, if you have no gossip or nothing to offer them then they never speak to you again. They also think nothing of walking into your garden and chopping something down if they don’t like it, which I find bizarre!
Very few of the inhabitants have ever left the village for any substantial amount of time, there’s quite a lot of poverty and racism, and a lot of drugs.
Luckily over the past 5-10 years there have been lots of families move here from elsewhere in the country, particularly London, they’ve bought money and a higher standard of living however the locals really don’t like them so it’s a bit of an ‘us and them’ situation. The only friends I’ve made here are also not from here originally. Shame really because on the face of it it’s a beautiful place; but underneath it all it’s not quite what it seems.

LivingDeadGirlUK · 20/04/2023 19:11

I don't think its odd to ask what road you live on as part of normal conversation with someone you don't know very well and the toddler group thing is normal but other than that it does seem a bit odd.

Trudij123 · 20/04/2023 19:26

RudsyFarmer · 19/04/2023 11:03

i would t say it’s normal no. But in the village I spend most time in there is a definite divide between those who’ve moved i to the large new housing development on the edge and those who’ve lived in the village for a long time.

Do you live in Devon by any chance? Sounds exactly like where I live…

Saschka · 20/04/2023 19:31

DurdleLau · 20/04/2023 19:08

I’d say it is, but only because I’ve had a similar experience! I grew up in Manchester, all the people I knew were friendly but you could still retain some anonymity, people knew the boundary of their garden and respected your privacy. I moved to a small village in Gloucestershire 15 years ago, and I must say now that I’ve got to know a lot of the people here it’s really changed my opinion of rural/semi rural village life. They are mostly either friends from birth or are related. They will chat to you but only to find out what you do for a living/which house you live in and try and get you talking about other people in the village, if you have no gossip or nothing to offer them then they never speak to you again. They also think nothing of walking into your garden and chopping something down if they don’t like it, which I find bizarre!
Very few of the inhabitants have ever left the village for any substantial amount of time, there’s quite a lot of poverty and racism, and a lot of drugs.
Luckily over the past 5-10 years there have been lots of families move here from elsewhere in the country, particularly London, they’ve bought money and a higher standard of living however the locals really don’t like them so it’s a bit of an ‘us and them’ situation. The only friends I’ve made here are also not from here originally. Shame really because on the face of it it’s a beautiful place; but underneath it all it’s not quite what it seems.

I lived in Gloucestershire for a couple of years, and “This Country” was painfully accurate…

newnamethanks · 20/04/2023 19:43

@DurdleLau, overheard this a few years ago in a village shop about 15 miles from Bristol.
Shopkeeper 'Oh, I haven't got that, you'll have to get it from Bristol.
Customer "Bristol? Oh I can't go there, nasty dirty place. I went there once, it's so big and noisy I've never been back there since".

wizzywig · 20/04/2023 19:45

Yep it's what I experienced in a village.

PoctorDepper · 20/04/2023 19:54

Hocuspocusnonsense · 19/04/2023 11:06

I had a leaflet through my letterbox asking for support to oppose anew housing development which will have HA houses because and I quote ‘Our village is not the place for these kind of people’.

Hahahahahahahahaha I sincerely hope the planning permission for the new development specifies 80% social housing.

newnamethanks · 20/04/2023 20:04

I'm a Londoner although I moved out about 15 years ago. What I fiqnd odd, living in a small place, is that nearly everyone does know everyone else. And they generally know what you and/or family members are doing and are happy to tell you about it "I saw your boy at the bus stop this morning, he was eating a sausage roll from Greggs". I miss the anonymity of the city where nobody would notice or comment on it if they did.