The death of the British countryside

[Dappy777]

I have lived in north Essex since 1998. When we moved here, this was a small village on the outskirts of a quiet market town. In the last ten years, it has been ruined. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for two huge new estates, and at the other end of the village a second giant housing estate has been built. Now we've been told the fields in the centre of the village are going to be built on as well. The traffic is so bad that the country lanes, which were meant to take the odd tractor and a few cars, now have the sort of congestion you'd expect on the M25. The main road into town is also having 500 new houses built along it. That road is choked with traffic now, so what the hell is it going to be like when 500 extra cars are added?

This beautiful weather has really brought it home to me. My sister lives in a village 30 miles from here, and it's exactly the same where she is. In fact, it's worse. Everywhere I go they are jamming more and more disgusting rabbit hutch 'houses' on top of one another. Instead of bird song, all you hear is the drone of cars and the screeching and backfiring of idiot boy racers. I think we really are living through the death of the British countryside. There will still be fields and trees, of course, but the countryside as I knew it will soon be gone forever.

What sickens me is that I know the left get a kick out of all this. They seem to think that everyone in the countryside is a rich, fox-hunting 'Tory' in a big mansion. In reality, the vast majority of so-called 'nimbys' are just ordinary people who've worked hard and desperately want a bit of peace and quiet. My sister has devoted 30 years to the NHS, as has her husband. They've slogged their guts out to buy a little semi-detached house in a village. Now that village is being destroyed around them.

Is it just here in the south east? Or is this happening in other parts of these islands?

The medium sized village that I lived in for 20 years has almost trebled in size over the past 10 years. Its not just immigration - if my exH and I had split up 10 years earlier, we would each have needed a 3 or 4 bedroom house so we could share custody of our 3 children. Then if each of us had remarried to someone with 3 children who they had shared custody of, you can see why so many more big houses are needed. And most houses contain at least two car households so there's no point building terraced houses with no parking anymore. Yes its awful for the wildlife and for those of us who love the fields to walk on but unfortunately, as PP have said, every house in the country was built on open ground! The village I mentioned before has so many campaigns going now against future development but I signed a petition against their housing development and I'm sure someone signed a petition against my housing estate being built.

I can understand OP's frustration. When making a major decision like buying a property, the quality of the surrounding environment plays a key role. If that changes over time, it's perfectly natural to feel disappointed.
But the population of the UK is going up year by year and people need to live somewhere so tough luck really. Sorry.

It's true that a lot of these modern estates could turn into the "slums of the future". I often see them, bland house after bland house, looking absolutely soulless, and indeed, with only tiny gardens. And, ironically, some of these estates have little or no visitor parking, apart from one tiny driveway in front of each house. And you can't get to them any other way, because they're often in isolated locations. What do these residents do if they want to have guests or were they built with lockdown in mind?

(wrong thread)

Why do new things have to be so so ugly in this country? Other countries manage to build beautiful new places. Why do we have to have these horrendous little boxes?

I am not against new things but I am against the brutal ugliness of what is built now. I can't understand why it has to be so awful.

This isn’t correct. We had peak asylum claims in early 2000s when in the EU, just via Lorrie’s. We didn’t send them back, there’s no way to do it en masse.

Op I live in a city so no impact but I get the feeling of losing greenery and nature due to high level of house building.

Are you including Labour in this?

The South-east is definitely worst affected. But it isn't just there and it isn't just a completely new phenomenon. I grew up in a tiny, rural village in the north. The middle of the town was a field that had hosted a cattle market every year, without fail since at least the Domesday book (getting on for a thousand year). It was cancelled one year for foot and mouth, twenty years ago or something. After that, it seemed to lose the protection that gave it. It went up for sale. The village tried to buy it and turn it into common land so the fair could continue. A VERY hefty offer was put together. Some palms were greased, though, and the field was sold to a developer friend of a councillor. They wouldn't engage with counter offers etc. It now has those cheaply built rabbit-hutch houses on. There is no summer fair or livestock market now and the village shop/post office and pub have since closed, so it hasn't even helped benefit the local economy.

It is hard isn't it - I live in a very small village - pub, primary school, ancient church, but no shop, PO etc. and virtually no bus service (once a week).

I hold my hand up to now living in a new build in the village. We lived in a large old cottage for decades, then OH died and I needed somewhere smaller.

I know that friends and others in the village were not keen to see this small development of 7 houses, but now we are all here everyone is very welcoming. It is a sensitively built group of houses and is no eyesore - and does not impinge much on traffic at all.

I have huge sympathy with the OP and her concerns. The tiny town where I was brought up is now a massive sprawl with a huge multi-lane roundabout in the centre. It must be so hard to see your beloved home area changed beyond recognition.

I do not know what the answer is - people have to live somewhere.

What I notice is the overall shabbiness and meanness. If you go to any other Western European country, the lamp posts, for example, are wrought iron or painted green, or have a charming nodding head. Here they are soulless concrete truncheons, severe and glaring.

It's such a little thing, but it's every little thing, repeated everywhere, until our lovely country is thoroughly enshittified. I love this country, this land, so much and I can't understand why it must be assaulted like this. And why the only response is that people must live somewhere. Of course they must! That's not the issue. I'm happy to build things. My problem is with what is built, not that building happens. And I don't think I'm alone in this.

We could choose differently. We could say that beauty matters.

Yes our neighbours did this.

makes me unhappy

I couldn't agree more. Not only Western Europe, the contrast was glaring even coming back from Morocco. Lots of new roads on the outskirts of Marrakesh, all of them with roses planted down the central reservation. New apartment buildings yes, but they all seemed to have a certain aesthetic and were painted that beautiful Marrakesh dusky pink. Coming back to the built environment of SE England was jarring.

Houses could be beautiful, eco friendly and incorporate space for wildlife- and, while we're at it, could be smaller, occupy smaller footprints, and be social housing. They could be an asset to communities. But while we leave it to greedy developers, they won't be

If only

I hardly think building 50 more houses in Dunny-on-the-Wold is comparable to Native people being literally driven from their homes and placed on reservations and treated as second class citizens as they are in America. How offensive can you get?

Jesus the absolute pity party.

Your world has ended because you can't hear a cuckoo. Meanwhile there are families living in B&Bs with 5 or 6 people to a room because there's no social housing and their private landlord kicked them out. Or women who have fled DV with their children who have no chance of getting affordable housing so they have to languish in a refuge on a waiting list that never ends.

But your world has ended because the stars are slightly less visible than they used to be. Mumsnet is a different planet sometimes.

We’re aspiring to more than ‘not living in an overcrowded slum’. Why are your aspirations so low?

It’s comparable in the sense that people think we can just move somewhere else. As if the place is arbitrary. They only say that about us because they are town-dwellers or people who’ve been very mobile and they don’t understand that even in Britain today there are people with a deep ancestral connection to a specific place. I used the comparison because if you talk about Native Americans or Palestinians or Chagos Islanders people can understand it. Maybe everyone thinks all English country-dwellers are retired London stockbrokers. They’re not!

I do not think some of it needs to be on the scale it is. End most second homes, end short term lets such as Air BnB, have no more commercial units below flats that end up empty a lot, and you could achieve a lot of new homes by proxy.

I do lol at ‘Dunny on the Wold’ though 😂

Totally agree. It's the same where we live. They are building on prime farming land. It's totally ridiculous. Public transport is a farce, not any increase in the number of doctors or hospital beds. It only takes a minor accident and the whole area is gridlocked. Don't even think of going shopping on a weekend or any day in December. We can't keep expanding into a ever depleted countryside.

Despite the large fall in birth rate, the UK population is rapidly increasing (from immigration).
It’s sad to see villages being converted to towns but people need houses.

Hardly a pity party. Beautiful English villages are getting spoiled with ugly housing estates, pollution, lazy homeowners & tenants who have zero respect for the fact that they are living on what once was beautiful land with an abundance of wildlife & natural beauty…

Why would they have any respect for what was? It’s just a home.

My house was built on open countryside in 1947. I never think about what was here all that time ago. Why would l? What does being lazy have to do with any of it?

I agree with this post. Nearest town to me has loads of empty buildings on the high street. I will call them former shops because they will never be shops again. The rates are too high and the footfall just isn’t there to make a viable business.
These empty shops could be developed into housing.

I live in the central belt of Scotland. It’s the same here. Everywhere is being built on. Commuter towns have been expanded so much they are practically touching the cities. Local council recently blocked more development on nearby greenfield sites, only for the Scottish Government to override it. You can’t win.