We've recently bought & want to move out

[Nextdoor55]

Small village in the middle of nowhere. Non stop issues with small minded neighbours, parking, boundaries, we've already seen a solicitor & had advice about how to move. Thankfully positive.

Asking someone to avoid blocking our garden gate resulted in 3 households ignoring us even though none of them directly involved. It's all people gossiping like school children, judgements & bitching. We're basically shunned by the village. And we've only had issues with one person. It's like a cult.

People grassing us up to local council for adding a fence & other minor "offences". Thankfully ignored.
Been here 11 months & it's been like something out of a folk horror movie. Cannot wait to move & will never live in a village again.
Also, never had these issues before despite living in a variety of homes.
So annoyed at making the mistake of moving here.

Anyone else regretted moving so soon?

I lived in a village for about a year and absolutely hated it. Same reasons as you listed. The people are immature (some even racist) and it shouldn't have been a surprise to me in retrospect because they live in a weird bubble. Also, they are usually not very well educated people. Many villages are quite deprived or a little better off than the 'worse off' in the country. Their "wealth" is usually just a home or two passed down but the generations have gotten weaker and weaker in their skills and any real education from relying on passing down property. At least, that's what it was like in West Berkshire. Most neighbours barely had any GCSEs and their young adult children were working in coffee shops FULL TIME instead of proper qualifications or further education. That's why I think the news is revealing remote rural areas are showing problems with poverty. It's generational stupidity.

Thank you for your insight I'm sure there's a lot of truth in what you say.

Did you buy or rent? It's such an upheaval moving so soon I just hope we can sell.

We moved to a village when I was a child and I hated it. Everyone was so insular and they didn't like it that I went to school in the nearby town instead of the village school, so some of the children could be quite off with me. It was really boring as well. I was happy when we moved into a small town a few years later.

@Nextdoor55
we rented which was good for us then because we could get the hell out quicker. Hopefully something will come up soon for you. In the meantime, get out of there and enjoy your evening and weekends. You'll be out of there in no time! :) good luck

@worriedftb having worked in West Berks I'd love to know where you mean 🤣 completely understand if you don't want to out yourself though!

haha, we are talking about 7 years ago now. Maybe I picked West Berkshire to throw people off but I was really in... say... Norwich? ;) Or maybe even Oxfordshire ;) or even the NorthEast ;) ?

No one gives real real details inc where they are from on MN, or at least, they shouldn't. Plus I wouldn't want to out the few people who were nice and decent. I think they wanted to leave too.

aww I live in a lovely West Berks village 😁

You're absolutely spot on. I've noticed exactly the same in Wiltshire. It's still basically feudal. A tiny number of well off who basically inherit the few larger houses who are as dumb as bricks and send their children to eccentric second rate private schools in the middle of nowhere, cult like places, and masses of council houses. I think of council estates in the urban sense of deprived high rises but the locals in the countryside enjoy pretty cushty council housing for life in pretty nice locations, generally well maintained. They're totally spoilt, yes poor but also strangely entitled by the welfare they get either council or from the local aristocrat. They have really poor social skills, inbred to the point where there are doppelgangers everywhere (my daughter's music teacher looks exactly like the lady at the post office counter and it gives me the creeps) and strangely very short with children who look malnourished even if not poor. It's muddy, flooded, boring and cut off due to exorbitant transport costs. My son's school rugby team joke that they know in advance they will lose to a city school because they're always taller and better fed. The locals also can't have conversations. I mean they just dive in straight off in the deep end, no build up, no gentle plesanteries, just straight in normally on the attack and always so extreme. They love to exaggerate. They are also cheeky and mean, as soon as they can take advantage of an extra bit of space or a privilege when an elderly neighbour is carted off to hospital they will. You could be on your deaths bed and they'll be parking in your drive way or putting their bins in your storage area etc or something similar as you take your last breath. Countless times I've viewed properties where it's clear the elderly person is take advantage of in terms of boundaries for example by cheeky bumpkins, they are very immature like this. Cities are cool places really, I reminisce about them, not even London really , I mean anywhere, I day dream about Cairo, New York, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo etc the brightest most ambitious people all doing their best to get along. Cities are the real test of civilization. I'm proud to have grown up in a city.

What a nasty thread.

I moved to a village 18 months ago. Love my house and garden, love the countryside but were a bit shocked by how unfriendly locals were ie newcomers into the village of about 10 years. Real locals - Farmers, were lovely. Now they are thawing to me and I at last have made some friendS.

I have always lived in cities or big towns because I hate people knowing my business and being nosy (not that my life is very exciting). I like the anonymity of big places so I totally understand your reasons for wanting to leave dullsville.

Nothing really to add apart from Good Luck with the move and don’t look back.

I moved to a small hamlet years ago. It was a very odd place. Beautiful countryside but we had neighbours who bordered our garden who turned out to be a nightmare. They walked around semi naked and talked in very loud voices. The man was obsessed with trees and shortly after we moved in insisted we cut down all the trees near his fence. So we did. There ensued endless battles as he kept insisting on more trees being felled. There was one pub and if we dared to go in, all his cronies would turn round and stare angrily at us. It escalated to real unpleasantness . We moved and rented the house out for several years . He continued to harass us by letter. In the end he died of a heart attack and we sold . It’s really put me off village life.

I'm getting on in years and have lived in a few cities including London, I've lived in a couple of towns and a number of villages too and find that people are pretty much the same wherever you go, polite and thoughtful people, or rude and selfish people live everywhere. The only difference is behaviour of others is more noticeable in a village since it's not diluted by the larger crowd. If there's a mean clique you know about it and it's hard to ignore, in a city a mean clique can be barely noticeable at all. Some newcomers are considerate of their neighbours but many buy a house then make changes to fit their ideas without a seconds thought to the impact they have on those around them. It cuts both ways.

For balance, I currently live in a village and I have to say that our latest neighbours are so fixated on what they want to do to their place they have proved to have zero consideration for the people they will be living next to, examples include complaining about where we park our cars (outside our own home, affecting nobody); pruning the shared boundary hedge to the extent it impacted our privacy without even the courtesy of any prior discussion as to why they were planning to do that, and after we complained to them they did it again; and drilling/hammering/using an angle grinder in the evenings sometimes till after 10pm without a word to us first or apology afterwards, when local rules state building work noise should cease at 6pm. They are so self-involved and discourteous that my autistic DC and I have started to feel bullied in our own home. Our previous neighbour died, he was a sweet chap I chatted to most days so the impact of this lot makes it doubly sad.

I've had similarly crap, inconsiderate neighbours in a city too, I remember one screaming and swearing at me in front of my toddler because I'd lodged a complaint about their plans for an extension which would have seen them building over our boundary and onto my property!

Its worth adding that people tend to move to villages when they wish for peace and privacy and often pay more for the privilege, if you steam in and do things that impacts others then don't like it when they grumble perhaps don't be shocked when word gets round. It sounds like the OP is unlucky but not all villages are a hornets nest of uneducated yokels, that's bollocks. Our village is populated equally with local families as well as doctors, scientists, university bigwigs, business professionals etc.

Not all villages are like this . I moved from a village to a town and have to say it’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made . Neighbours from hell and lots of gossipy locals. Be careful as the grass isn’t always greener.

I hear you.
We did 7 years in a Cornish village and I found it small minded and mean spirited. No one seemed interested in ambition or improvement or anything but moaning about incomers and dog shit.
Very glad to have moved away.

I think BBC This Country is a brilliant representation of what it's like. The class divide, the retirees who are used to cities really and bring their pretend community spirit village hall politics but with lashing of city dweller territorialism, the educated vicar that wants to see the good in everyone, the entitled locals stuck in their ways but also isolated, immature etc. Honestly it's pretty accurate. There are educated people moving to villages of course but they leave the place empty during the week with long commutes and the stress of that lifestyle of making a city income but living the country dream makes them very irritable and anti social by the weekend. Also the old S. Johnson saying when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, has some truth in it, you will be surrounded by people who have moved there because they are tired of other people, have mentaly shut down to accept new people and the unspoken truth is what they also mean is multiculturalism, the ugly truth is what I've seen out in the sticks is a lot of white flight. I've had a lot of wink wink nudge nudge why have you "really" moved here. I have noticed that villages are much better where it's genuinely agricultural with multigenerational farming with no scope at all for commuting to a city, I haven't seen too much of the attitude of the shires in Ireland for example.

I'd say trust your instincts, that sounds totally crap and not all villages are like that. We felt so welcomed by everyone in our village but it is a bit of a growing commuter village so lots of newcomers before us and its quite large.

Nasty unless you're living it.

We moved to Cornwall when I was a kid I never felt welcome, lived there for years and never felt welcome.

Sounds like you've had some bad luck with neighbours.
I mean though, here everyone is unpleasant bar ones other household who have their house up for sale!
Last house we lived in for 16 years was a bigger village, perhaps 1000 people. No problems there with mostly normal people. This village is smaller, narrow minded to boot. Nope I'm moving again I'm too old for this.

I agree. None of the villages I've ever lived in (including as an incomer) have ever been anything like this. This whole thread smacks of a huge superiority compex on behalf of the city people.

Wow surprised at these comments, I’ve lived in major cities, mainland Europe, and Villages and never come across this.

the people are well educated and wealthy on the whole. It’s an expensive village in the south east. Yes some petty squabbles but that’s as everyone knows everyone.

the whole thick, stupid, unwelcoming angry thing sounds horrific and fortunately not something I’ve witnessed.

Thank you

It sounds as though this particular village does not suit you.

The small village I live in is supportive, friendly, lots of activities - I love living here. I had a heart scare last week and offers to drive me to the docs flowed in.

Except. We lived in a village before this one, which was fine actually for over 16 years.
Could be bad luck with this one.