Blogathon 16/23: The village

No, not Sir Clough Williams-Ellis’ Italianate architectural bonkersness on the North Welsh coast. I mean this little village. After talking about the pet shop of awesomeness I thought to myself ‘Self’, I thought. ‘For today’s blogathon post, let’s have a look at the commercial enterprises in this here hamlet.’ So buckle up buttercup, because here we go. And yet… before we start, it’s important to have a little historical context.

The village dates from around the 8th Century, but proper documentation doesn’t begin until the Domesday Book of 1086. This tells us the village consisted of nothing more than some post-enclosure farm labourers dwellings and some land marked as ‘farms’. Life continued in the village peacefully for many hundreds of years, and the village gradually grew. As transport technology was introduced, a coaching inn and tollhouse were added, and the farm labourers dwellings became a row of cottages. Well, I say peacefully, I mean apart from the murder that took place in the coaching inn, in 1350. But one recorded murder in approximately 1,300 years counts as peaceful, I think?

Anyway.

So that used to be the centre of the village. Some time around 1820 (almost modern day by comparison), the coaching inn was transformed into a much bigger building that is today known as The Lodge. As you’d expect, The Lodge remained the focal point of the village. As time passed The Lodge grew into the village store and again, as you’d expect, being on the coaching route, it also became the Post Office (but not Post Office as we would know it these days). In 1929 the new-fangled invention of aviation came to the village. An airfield was constructed on a large, flat swathe of open farmland a few hundred metres north of The Lodge. As time passed and aviation grew, the associated engineering and support industries at the airfield also grew and that brought a need for additional housing. In the mid 1930s new houses were built a 40-minute walk away from the airfield (because in the 1930s walking was the main type of transport widely available). A few years after the first of the new houses were complete, the 1939-1945 war broke out. The airfield was taken over by the War Ministry and became an RAF Station. With the advent of military air traffic the RAF Station increased. So too did the village but, unsurprisingly, new houses were planned near the 1930s houses not near all the aviation activity. These plans were passed despite the former coaching inn, The Lodge – down near the RAF Station – still being the only shop and the village post office. Soon after WW2 and with aviation showing no sign of reducing, someone realised that the expanded village needed a more convenient means of buying food because an 80-minute round-trip on foot wasn’t winning any votes. The village continued to expand as another hundred or so houses were added not far from the 1930s houses, but even further away from The Lodge. In the late 1960s a small parade of five shops was opened near the latest bunch of houses, together with a pub that was pure 1960s in design and, architecturally speaking, most displeasing to the eye. The Lodge became a private residence and thus the centre of the village became this late 1960s construct of pub and small parade of shops.

Well, this mostly accurate potted history of the village has gone on rather long enough. I’ll do the commercial enterprises in these parts tomorrow. Stay tuned for more riveting info!