‘Harley has Changed’
“Harley has Changed”. These words are often banded about and are of course true depending upon the timespan under consideration. I am often struck by such remarks, usually deploring the changes over the years which more often than not refer to relatively small changes. But small can be extremely important psychologically.
You might for example think that it is older people, of a nostalgic frame of mind, and with long memories who make such comments. Margaret Bennett, who has long lived in the village and who passed away in her eighties, often said, in a regretful tone but without enlarging, ’Harley has changed.’
In complete contrast, Duncan James, musician and a very modern man, the son of Peter and Merle James, was brought up in the village in the seventies and early eighties, and now lives in Zurich. Duncan and his family visit Harley once a year at Christmas. Again, without being explicit Duncan is clearly upset by the changes which he perceives, creating clashes with his childhood memories. Conversely, perhaps when you live continuously in a place changes are easier to handle or might even pass unnoticed.
When we came in 1973/4, along with the three working farms, there was a Blacksmith and a working Forge, and I distinctly remember the small white haired Blacksmith leading two giant horses towering above him one on each side, through the village. Cows grazed almost up to the back of Glebe Cottage, and we looked south, as we still do, over farmland towards Wenlock Edge with scarcely a building in sight. Fortunately, this has not changed. We are lucky.
Sometime in the early seventies, Rosemary Leach, an actress, said on TV that she had been born locally and that Wenlock Edge was the most romantic place in Britain. It would be difficult to challenge that perception.
To Cyril Hughes to whom the view was a constant backcloth to his life I got the distinct impression working with him in the garden that it was so taken for granted that it almost did not exist. Townies moving in see things very differently from villagers who have always lived here. Maybe in their own way they appreciate the natural environment more in aesthetic sense but they certainly do not know the land anything like a person who has worked it, shaped it and lived from it and on it all all their lives.
1600 and all that
My eldest daughter Andrea, as part of a William Brookes school project estimated that Glebe Cottage was built around 1620 to 1640. The Old Rectory, home of Margaret and Paul Trenberth, is according to the Victoria County History, the oldest surviving house, the half timbered part being built before 1612, so she was probably about right.
My youngest daughter, Vivianne, who became a TV documentary-maker, said soon after we moved in, ‘I wonder how many people have died in this house?’ I replied, ‘over nearly four hundred years, quite a lot, I would think. I haven’t seen or heard any of them so far’. She always did have an overactive imagination!