In Search of Rural Living
Share with others:
LONDON -- The British weekly magazine Country Life taps into a world where even the most committed city lover could be tempted to buy a pair of Wellington boots and a Labrador puppy. Since 1897, magazine has printed page after page of property dreams -- Georgian manors, Elizabethan lodges, country estates -- at prices few can afford.
Now the magazine has published a book, "Curious Observations: A Country Miscellany," a collection of ramblings and black-and-white photographs gleaned from its pages over 114 years.
Declaring that "even the town dweller is a country man at heart," the book evokes a world of thatched cottages, like the one shown in 1903, with its caldron over an open fire and haddock smoking on the beam above.
Is there anywhere today that matches up to the "old simplicities" captured in the book? In the property world, the major real estate agents tend to judge things in relation to London and its sharply inflated prime market.
Liam Bailey, head of residential research for the Knight Frank real estate agency, said: "In normal times, the prime country house market would follow the growth cycle set by the central London market, with a lag of around 18 months. London booms, the luxury country sector follows."
But, "these are not normal times," Mr. Bailey said. "Prime London has risen in value by 36 percent since March 2009, but country houses are only marginally -- 5 percent on average -- above their post-Lehman nadir."
In its report on country sales in the third quarter of 2011, published at the end of September, prices had fallen an average of 1.7 percent year over year.
The real estate agency Savills gauge prices as down 16.6 percent since their peak of 2007, while it lists prime London values as 15.6 percent above that.
Savills says the markets that are completely divorced from London -- like the Midlands and the North (down 6 percent) and Scotland (down 4 percent) -- have been the slowest to recover in the last 12 months. A typical four-bed family home in prime southwest London is now about £1.32 million, or $2.05 million, while an equivalent family home in favored commuter zones just outside the M25 motorway is around £805,000 -- a difference of £520,000. Five years ago, the difference was £190,000.
But country living is not about tracking market trends.
As Mark Hedges, the editor of Country Life, which has a weekly circulation of 37,206, said, "What is very interesting about the British is that they have as part of their DNA a deep in-built love of the countryside."
"For instance," Mr. Hedges said, "if you win the lottery or you are a hedge fund manager or successful in any way, the trophy of success is to live in the countryside. This is unique to us. In France, if you make money, you move to Paris, which is why the only people who live in the French countryside are the British."
Mr. Hedges noted that walking remains Britain's favorite pastime, far exceeding attending soccer matches. "But not everything is rosy," he said. "There are places of terrible poverty where people are held to ransom by petrol prices. Village shops and pubs are becoming extinct."
The statistics indicate that the staples of traditional village life are disappearing fast. Schools closed at a rate of one a month from 1997 through 2008; in 2009, almost 700 country pubs called "time" for the last time; and 1,200 shops have shut in the last two years.
Does the rural idyll still exist?
One village celebrated in the book is Bray, Berkshire, on the River Thames, about 30 miles, or 48 kilometers, west of London. In the magazine's issue of July 22, 1899, it was praised for its "rare picturesqueness and an old world rusticity." Bray's "cottages wreathed with flowers" were noted, as well as its "fortune to lie upon no highway save the river."
What would the writer find today?
There are still flower-covered cottages in timber and warm stone, but a high-speed roadway lies a few hundred yards to the south, and the place is joined to the unmemorable town of Maidenhead by a haphazard urban sprawl.
It's busy, too. Heston Blumenthal, the chef who introduced the world to the delights of snail porridge at The Fat Duck, his three-Michelin-star restaurant, now owns two other restaurants in the village, so its streets are jammed with hungry visitors and their cars.
Magnolia Cabin, which combines a mock Tudor front with wide-screen windows, has three bedrooms and a boat mooring and is on the market with Savills for £1.6 million. More prosaically, a notably unpicturesque modern two-bedroom apartment near the roadway is for sale for at £249,950.
For the archetypal village, Mr. Hedges, the Country Life editor, cites East Meon, near his home in Hampshire, in southern England.
"Every now and again you come across a village where everything works," he said. "East Meon is wonderfully active. It has a fantastic parish magazine; it stages plays, a beer festival and a summer fete."
"Everyone knows each other," he added. "If you go the pub and you need someone to fix the boiler or cut the hedge, they will know by word-of-mouth who can do it."
A 16th-century mill house with a garden that edges the River Meon is on the market for £945,000.
James Grillo, who works in the country department at Chesterton Humberts real estate, recommends heading north to the county of Rutland.
"One of the key attractions to the area is the good private schools such as Oakham, Uppingham and Oundle," he said. "Unlike many parts of the U.K., the villages and market towns in Rutland still have quintessentially British local shops like butchers, bakers and grocers."
In the pretty village of Exton, an 18th-century vicarage just off the green with nine bedrooms and five living rooms is for sale at £3.25 million.
Savills lists Chew Magna, Somerset, near Bristol, as its best overall place to live, with its population of 1,161, three pubs, two banks, two hairdressers, a butcher and a cafe.
In the best-schools category, there is Chipperfield, Hertfordshire, a commuter village north of London with a population of 1,800, where 96 percent of its pupils have marks exceeding the national average.
One of the best budget recommendations is the pretty stone village of Navenby, which is near Lincoln and has population of 1,666. It has a baker, a butcher and a good primary school; a nice-looking 17th-century stone house with five bedrooms in the High Street is £465,000.
Under the heading "best getaway" is Mylor Bridge, which has a population of 2,533 and is in Cornwall, the county where one in every 20 properties is a second home. The town is on a creek five miles from Falmouth. It has a post office, a butcher, a fishmonger, a pub and a primary school. A four-bedroom house near the water is listed for £595,000.
Farther afield in Hovingham, North Yorkshire, with a population of 1,777, is a handsome former police house with four bedrooms at £499,950.
"The further you get from London the greater the sense of community," Mr. Hedges said. "People trust each other, which is important in these dark economic days."
"Curious Observations: A Country Miscellany," Country Life magazine, Simon and Schuster Ltd., 2011, £12.99.
First Published January 27, 2012 12:00 am
