‘There wasn’t all that much to do … at least not here’: memories of growing up in rural south-west England in the early twentieth century

Laura Harrison

doi:10.1017/s0956793320000199

Abstract

Abstract Stan was born in 1911 in a small village near the north Somerset coast. When recalling his life in the countryside, he felt that ‘there wasn’t much to do in the evenings … at least not here’. Drawing upon evidence from personal accounts of growing up in the south-west of England in the early twentieth century, this article examines memories of youth in the countryside, with a particular focus on the leisure lives of young people and their experiences of rural space and place. In addition to adding to our knowledge on the lives of rural youth, this study also provides new insights into the complex relationship between people and their environment, and has implications for our understandings of the early formation of a distinct youthful identity in England. The countryside was not simply a backdrop in these recollections; rather, it was formative in how those that grew up in rural communities understood their experience of being young.

Highlights

Stan was born in 1911 in a small village near the north Somerset coast, and grew up in what he described as a ‘typical country cottage’
Leisure is often associated with the development of a distinct youthful identity in the early twentieth century, but historical understandings of youthful leisure have largely been told from an urban perspective.[3]
Denis Cluett, who grew up in Sampford Peverell, Devon in the years before the First World War recalled a childhood spent ‘roaming the lanes and fields’, and ‘never remembered feeling bored because there always seemed to be so much to do in the country’, but many oral history respondents commented on increased feelings of dissatisfaction and boredom with rural life as they grew older.[55]