Chapter 18
Changes

It is often said, and probably the statement is true, that human nature does not change much over the centuries. It might be equally true to say that changes in the environment of people have an effect on their physical being and on their mental outlook. So what are the environmental changes in Hillesley since George Vth came to the throne and the Kaiser invaded Belgium in 1914? I can only sketch a few of them.
Housing is one of the spheres of significant development. Few houses were owner-occupied before 1914. The Duke of Beaufort and the Hale family owned a number of houses, the others were mostly rented, some for as little as one shilling per week. Indoor sanitation was the privilege of the very few, and a high proportion of cottagers fetched all their water from the outside taps in the street.
Most people used paraffin for lighting and many had a small oil stove for boiling kettles, but most cooking, and very good cooking most of it was, was done on the old black grate, and washing was done in the copper in the scullery.
There must have been very few people in Hillesley in the years before the war who had ever pressed a light switch, not many more had spoken on the telephone. All our night cycling was done by the light of a tiny oil lamp, or the more venturous might use an evil-smelling acetylene light. If you drove a horse and trap in the dark a pair of candle lamps lighted, or failed to light, your way.
I was thirteen years old before I had a ride in a car. I think there was occasional visits by people showing 'living pictures' but in general the nearest most of us had ever been to the world of cinema was a visit to a 'magic lantern' evening.
The late A. G. Street, when on a B.B.C. programme, was asked what modern development had brought the most benefit to the human race. He replied without hesitation, "The Wellington Boot!" As regards country-dwellers he was not so far wrong. Anyone who remembers the split cow-hide boots which farm workers had to wear, boots that the most careful greasing could not make water-proof, nor applications of neat's foot oil could effectively soften, will remember too the broken chilblains, the bunions and the corns which those hard heavy boots caused. Picture of cowman who was out in wet grass at dawn to gather his cows - his boots were sodden long before the day was done, or the ploughman who followed his team through endless furrows of sticky soil - no wonder farm-workers were old at sixty.
There were a few daring ones who stuck 'Phillips' rubber soles to their boots, there were also to be seen in the upper strata of village society some rubber overshoes called 'galoshes'. In general working men wore heavy leather boots, with steel tips and hob-nails. On Sundays there were lighter boots from Northampton's factories, generally black but occasionally brown. The habit of wearing shoes never caught on until after the Great War.
It was the war which started the era of owner-occupation of both farms and houses. it was not until the redistribution of wealth caused by taxation and Lloyd George's death duties took effect that the old order of landlord and tenant began to break down.
Men returning from Army service in 1918 were paid a modest gratuity and if they were able to buy a cottage for under a hundred pounds.
The war also brought with it a new relationship between master and man. Of course men returning from four years overseas brought new ideas with them. Older men had had the taste of high wages paid to those who worked at war-time construction projects. The aerodromes at Leighterton and Yate had made labour scarce and men no longer felt any need to touch their caps to any employer.
I suppose these changes would have come in some other way had the war never happened. They would have taken much longer and perhaps the effects would have been less drastic.
As I look back to the settled order of my childhood days, when there was little questioning of the established order as it then was, when Church and Chapel were live centres of village thought and action, when the Labour Party was but a dim cloud or hope upon the horizon of the future, when Lloyd George's pension of five shillings a week was but a token of the Welfare State to come, it then that I realise the magnitude of the changes which have taken place in village life. While these changes may have destroyed some of the good things we had, they have also brought with them an amazing amount of privilege and comfort.