Just charming. So glad there was a camera there, absolutely nothing like actual VISUAL documentation of times gone by. Some interviews with the villagers would have been a nice touch, but perhaps those are in other films. Thanks for sharing this. I just love England.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could go back to those times they certainly weren't workshy not like today break a fingernail and it's a week off work.😅😅
I've lived in the rural south-west of England my whole life, and so I'm familiar with villages mostly in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, but even being elsewhere in England, this wonderful video of rural village life of yesteryear is familiar and nostalgic to me. So much has changed in the last century, yet some villages still look very much the same (except instead of one or two cars as seen in this video, there are now parked cars bumper-to-bumper on both sides of the road, and somehow two-way traffic squeezing through as well).
Apart from the town square being full of cars nowadays and people wearing different clothes, Lavenham is pretty much exactly the same as in this video now! Even down the Hovis sign lol. Such a lovely place.
Beautifully narrated😊 An excellent insight into 1940s village life, when everything was simple then and appreciated, before the age of technology etc!!!!
That’s because you didn’t have to live there. The work for farm labourers was back breaking and poorly paid. Most were unable to continue into their fifties. The houses were largely unheated and the diet limited. Holidays were short and no one went abroad. There was little entertainment beyond the radio ( three stations) and newspapers. Very few people had a car or telephone.
So bloody what? Everybody is of their time, and every period has it's particular problems, and 99.9% of the people don't give them a thought. It's just life and they get on with it. Comments such as yours are pointless.
No question, this is Lavenham, Suffolk, the most complete medieval Town in Britain. A real gem, I visited it 10 years ago, and some of the houses had been smartened up, but not spoiled.
I grew up in a country village in Hampshire at this time. Everyone in the village would turn out to help with the harvest. We were near the sea, so no shortage of fresh fish! The village was virtually self sufficient with a variety of shops; it was very much a "pull together" community. Despite rationing and lack of heat; how I miss those times.
Beautiful. Loved the dog by the electric fire! No texting, no fax, no email when a tradesperson was admired not requiring a high technical or professional education to prosper.
I'm afraid that they didn't actually prosper, cheaper food from the Empire meant that there was a great deal of poverty and lack of funding between the wars.
@@davidhampson765 Damn! All that butter, cheese, lamb, beef and fruit that we produced so efficiently and cheaply. We should have charged Britain more for it. It certainly wasn't our lower priced agricultural goods that stopped Britain from joining the EEC and forsaking us.
4 years before I was born; so I can remember a lot of that simple life. Compared to today - it was wonderful. Oh, we didn't have all the mod-cons, the computers, the mobile phones and the rest. What we had was real people, respect, honour and honesty. A better life in so many ways.
We as a country need to talk about the impact of the motor car. We need more rail, better bus services, more delivery services, and less car ownership (even by the rich). Each year car manufacturers come up with bigger and bigger cars, its all so unnecessary. We live on a small island, and that fact needs to be addressed.
I've lived in the UK for over 50 years - in village, small town, large town and city. I haven't owned a car for nearly 30 years (most of my adult life). I have holidays, weekends away and day trips all over rural and semi-rural Britain. In the last few months I've been all over Cheshire, parts of the Peak District, Cumbria, North Wales, East Sussex, Cornwall, the Calder Valley and more. All by train and bus. It's entirely possible. People just don't want to.
How wrong they got it in predicting the future. The life they show here has long gone and will never return!!. These lovely villages are no longer places of community. They are now over priced desirable properties for the rich!. Land which was once under the plough is now under tarmac and concrete. It makes me sad, this was a snippet of how rural England was......never to return!!.
Nonsense. Whole swathes of most counties are still just quiet, unassuming villages that very few people have heard of. I grew up in Cheshire. It was (and still is) quite a lot like this.
Couldn't agree with you more. The plague of ugly modernist design and short-term opportunist planning has done more harm to the aesthetics of the English landscape than the battalions of German aircraft managed.
Indeed. BUT, the churches, government buildings and the Council House will remain totally immune. Brought up in Coventry, a medieval town before the war, the same nonsense prevailed.
Little to do with buildings or planning. If you look at current views of Lavenham on Streetview you will see that many of the old buildings shown in this film still exist. But they are prettified empty shells because the village economy that created them no longer exists and they are just residences for the rich.
Does anyone know today's Villages still exist they're so wonderful I like to think that if I went to Britain today I could find one of these Villages and spend a few days there they're so lovely I just hope they're not filled with McDonald's and shopping malls like they are the United States we have no Villages the ones we had now or just deserted I think maybe some of them are coming back because the mall is on his way out thank God
Thanks to others on here would have identified this village as Lavenham. If you Google Street map the village now you'll see how completely choked it is with cars and vans. We accept this as normal but its quite a shock to watch this video then look at it today, the comparison is really quite depressing. But where would we be without our cars?
Not least RAF Lavenham. Home to the 487th Bomb Group equipped with B-17s and B-24s. About two miles north of the village. Despite being closed in 1948 the runway outline is still pretty clear on Google Earth. www.google.com/maps/place/52%C2%B008'10.0%22N+0%C2%B046'15.6%22E/@52.1361062,0.7622489,2933m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x47d9aca079484581:0xfee9771e59ae2609!2sLavenham,+Sudbury,+UK!3b1!8m2!3d52.1075894!4d0.7954572!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d52.1361029!4d0.7710059
How can our lifestyle leap so much in so little timespan, compared with all of history.? It looks like a deliberate revealing of knowledge, after all why did man's best brains not make these discoveries long ago.? Did our brains change.?
Dear British Council UA-cam Team, Just wondering if it would be at all possible to use various clips from some of your archive films, to comp together to make a music video for our original song called "Come to town" We are unsigned singer-songwriters from London called BlackDogHat. Many thanks John Sage
Hello +BlackDogHat, Thank you for your message. I've contacted the rights owner and will let you know when I hear back from them. Many thanks, Charlotte
@@BlackDogHat Oh! Dear! That's such a shame. Other people simply seem to change the sound track or the aspect ratio of bits they want to use, then just go ahead hoping its fair use for educational purposes or some such contrivance. Periscope Films has access to a huge stockpile of films they are restoring perhaps they could assist you in your search for suitable clips. Cheers.
Yes, it's Lavenham. The monument at 2.17 can be seen on Google maps at www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.1090993,0.7964307,3a,75y,45.56h,86.02t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1wOAhrUeSxyxq9bpPQRo0A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Now we are not dependent on the land. We are stuck, caught in a trap, where our modern lives are dependent on imports from Yankee Empire. We have been neutered.
Ironic listening to the commentary about the ancient villages, housing and architecture, the same places the English were bombing in Germany for no reason other than the destruction of 1000 years of history.
I think you are getting mixed up with he Baedekker raids of 1942-43. That was a German philosophy, to target our history and centres of culture. Cities like Canterbury, wih no war production or strategic value suffered terribly.
@@richardcurry4912 Oh yes, to be conquered by their two mortal enemies, Germany and Russia. I'm sure that was right at the top of their list. After being taken over by The Soviet Union in 1945 the Polish saying was "The Soviet Union forever, but not a day longer".
Videos like this are so comforting and relaxing and I love how they spoke back then.
Yes English is a dying language.britain is now a holiday camp for people from around the empire that was.
What a beautifully-photographed film of an age now long past: very nostalgic!
Bruce Anderton Right in the middle of World War 11.
If its Lavenham it still looks like that👍
@@trajanofrome4750 Those people are gone now, replaced by others living in a different world.
@@jonka1 ...as those people replaced the previous generations who lived in a yet different world.
These films are so lovely - thank you so much for putting up such valuable records of our past.
This is a treasure of bygone times Thank you for posting!
Just charming. So glad there was a camera there, absolutely nothing like actual VISUAL documentation of times gone by. Some interviews with the villagers would have been a nice touch, but perhaps those are in other films. Thanks for sharing this. I just love England.
You echo my thoughts!
Interviews with the locals would've meant taking along sound equipment as well which was an extra expense and probably not feasible during wartime.
A gentle archive.
At 1.50 the place on the right is now the wonderful swan hotel, we just come back . the town is Lavenham in suffork , beautiful place
What a beautiful video. How hard it must have been at that time. That is what I call hard work. Real men. Thank you for sharing this video.
Oh, to go back to those days!
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could go back to those times they certainly weren't workshy not like today break a fingernail and it's a week off work.😅😅
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Beautiful, a bygone age which we will never see again
I've lived in the rural south-west of England my whole life, and so I'm familiar with villages mostly in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, but even being elsewhere in England, this wonderful video of rural village life of yesteryear is familiar and nostalgic to me. So much has changed in the last century, yet some villages still look very much the same (except instead of one or two cars as seen in this video, there are now parked cars bumper-to-bumper on both sides of the road, and somehow two-way traffic squeezing through as well).
Apart from the town square being full of cars nowadays and people wearing different clothes, Lavenham is pretty much exactly the same as in this video now! Even down the Hovis sign lol. Such a lovely place.
Beautifully narrated😊 An excellent insight into 1940s village life, when everything was simple then and appreciated, before the age of technology etc!!!!
A simpler and harder life back then, but I think I prefer it in some ways to the place we live in today.
It wasn't harder people were brought up learning life skills there was hard work but people had pride in their homeland and communities lovely times ❤
That’s because you didn’t have to live there. The work for farm labourers was back breaking and poorly paid. Most were unable to continue into their fifties. The houses were largely unheated and the diet limited. Holidays were short and no one went abroad. There was little entertainment beyond the radio ( three stations) and newspapers. Very few people had a car or telephone.
So bloody what? Everybody is of their time, and every period has it's particular problems, and 99.9% of the people don't give them a thought. It's just life and they get on with it. Comments such as yours are pointless.
Thank you so much for such excellent videos
I wish more of England's homes were further set back from the road with lawns and trees in front and all around each house.
This reminds me of film reels I watched in 1960's elementary school. Thank you.
in the usa
@@lindabingham394 Canada.
When the film ended we children clapped too (also in the 1960s).
Must be lavenham as it was wool that made it prosperous. What a beautiful, simpler way of life. Hard work though.
Tough people that worked hard for all d community better times 😢😢
Great films, a good look at what we have lost as a country.
Interesting article on London in the latest Harpers. (March 2017)
I believe it's Lavenham, in Suffolk. The timbered houses and the church certainly look like Lavenham.
No question, this is Lavenham, Suffolk, the most complete medieval Town in Britain. A real gem, I visited it 10 years ago, and some of the houses had been smartened up, but not spoiled.
Tis
Yep!
Yes, the church certainly looks like it
Thank you, I was wondering where it was.
I grew up in a country village in Hampshire at this time. Everyone in the village would turn out to help with the harvest. We were near the sea, so no shortage of fresh fish! The village was virtually self sufficient with a variety of shops; it was very much a "pull together" community. Despite rationing and lack of heat; how I miss those times.
Groceries
Did the local farmers bum you?
A fascinating look at farming not so long ago. Thanks for posting
Beautiful. Loved the dog by the electric fire! No texting, no fax, no email when a tradesperson was admired not requiring a high technical or professional education to prosper.
I'm afraid that they didn't actually prosper, cheaper food from the Empire meant that there was a great deal of poverty and lack of funding between the wars.
@@davidhampson765 Thats right, blame the Empire!!!
I think you'd struggle to find a fax machine in Lavenham these days.
@@katieperry3998 He's blaming historical fact.
@@davidhampson765 Damn! All that butter, cheese, lamb, beef and fruit that we produced so efficiently and cheaply. We should have charged Britain more for it. It certainly wasn't our lower priced agricultural goods that stopped Britain from joining the EEC and forsaking us.
4 years before I was born; so I can remember a lot of that simple life. Compared to today - it was wonderful. Oh, we didn't have all the mod-cons, the computers, the mobile phones and the rest. What we had was real people, respect, honour and honesty. A better life in so many ways.
We as a country need to talk about the impact of the motor car. We need more rail, better bus services, more delivery services, and less car ownership (even by the rich). Each year car manufacturers come up with bigger and bigger cars, its all so unnecessary. We live on a small island, and that fact needs to be addressed.
We also need to discuss immigration. Britain is not for everyone in the world.
I've lived in the UK for over 50 years - in village, small town, large town and city. I haven't owned a car for nearly 30 years (most of my adult life).
I have holidays, weekends away and day trips all over rural and semi-rural Britain. In the last few months I've been all over Cheshire, parts of the Peak District, Cumbria, North Wales, East Sussex, Cornwall, the Calder Valley and more. All by train and bus.
It's entirely possible. People just don't want to.
clairenoon. So bully for you. That's your choice, allow others their's.
Wow So glad that I found this channel!
I love these episodes!💖💚
Lovely to think this is how my dear old Nan grew up, in 1940s Suffolk.
That is the world of my Grandad & Grandma.
When I lived in England I lived in several places and one of them was a village with three short streets of houses and a newsagents.
Lovely film - astonishing that they were able to make it during the war (1942)?
A beautiful time. No Internet when life was so much better
How wrong they got it in predicting the future. The life they show here has long gone and will never return!!. These lovely villages are no longer places of community. They are now over priced desirable properties for the rich!. Land which was once under the plough is now under tarmac and concrete. It makes me sad, this was a snippet of how rural England was......never to return!!.
We can return. Deurbanisation is possible.
Nonsense. Whole swathes of most counties are still just quiet, unassuming villages that very few people have heard of. I grew up in Cheshire. It was (and still is) quite a lot like this.
But for how much longer with the unwanted, disruptive, incomers being forcibly distributed all around the country.
Heartbreaking to what’s happened to this once beautiful country ,,, these people in the film would not recognise it now 😢😢😢
WONDERFUL TIMES.
9:13 now where can I get one of those glasses?
Must've contained a quart of ale.
Santa, can I have a Time Machine for Christmas this year please ?
8:57 is 'The Swan' at Lavenham, Suffolk.
The village shown is Lavenham in Suffolk.
The first few minutes is my village lavenham Suffolk ❤
How does it compare with today?
Wow.
Couldn't agree with you more. The plague of ugly modernist design and short-term opportunist planning has done more harm to the aesthetics of the English landscape than the battalions of German aircraft managed.
Lytton333 hear hear, old bean.
Indeed. BUT, the churches, government buildings and the Council House will remain totally immune. Brought up in Coventry, a medieval town before the war, the same nonsense prevailed.
Er...yes. But they were squadrons, not 'battalions'.
@@wayinfront1 You just might have missed his point.
Little to do with buildings or planning. If you look at current views of Lavenham on Streetview you will see that many of the old buildings shown in this film still exist. But they are prettified empty shells because the village economy that created them no longer exists and they are just residences for the rich.
Back in the days when people dressed nicely to go out in public.
Does anyone know today's Villages still exist they're so wonderful I like to think that if I went to Britain today I could find one of these Villages and spend a few days there they're so lovely I just hope they're not filled with McDonald's and shopping malls like they are the United States we have no Villages the ones we had now or just deserted I think maybe some of them are coming back because the mall is on his way out thank God
I doubt you'd find a village like this one. That's not to say that there aren't still small villages/towns, but they're not stuck in the 40s or 50s.
Thanks to others on here would have identified this village as Lavenham.
If you Google Street map the village now you'll see how completely choked it is with cars and vans.
We accept this as normal but its quite a shock to watch this video then look at it today, the comparison is really quite depressing.
But where would we be without our cars?
8.15, doggy ready for a snooze!
paul broderick Yes he’s beautiful!
08:26 look at the size of that fireplace, sure it was used to spit-roast chicken.
Oh for a time machine.
So many of the fields in eastern England would become airfields and familar country sounds overwhelmed with the roar of aero engines.
Not least RAF Lavenham. Home to the 487th Bomb Group equipped with B-17s and B-24s. About two miles north of the village. Despite being closed in 1948 the runway outline is still pretty clear on Google Earth. www.google.com/maps/place/52%C2%B008'10.0%22N+0%C2%B046'15.6%22E/@52.1361062,0.7622489,2933m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x47d9aca079484581:0xfee9771e59ae2609!2sLavenham,+Sudbury,+UK!3b1!8m2!3d52.1075894!4d0.7954572!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d52.1361029!4d0.7710059
Most interesting!
How can our lifestyle leap so much in so little timespan, compared with all of history.?
It looks like a deliberate revealing of knowledge, after all why did man's best brains not make these discoveries long ago.? Did our brains change.?
I always tend to notice English skies. Cloud formations over England appear to me to be somewhat unique to the land and sea meetings.
anyone know the name of this village?
Dear British Council UA-cam Team,
Just wondering if it would be at all possible to use various clips from some of your archive films, to comp together to make a music video for our original song called "Come to town"
We are unsigned singer-songwriters from London called BlackDogHat.
Many thanks
John Sage
Hello +BlackDogHat,
Thank you for your message. I've contacted the rights owner and will let you know when I hear back from them.
Many thanks,
Charlotte
+British Council
Thank you so much Charlotte,
John
@@BlackDogHat So . . .
It's been 5 years since they promised to let you know about the copyright issue.
What was the result?
🤔
(asking for a friend)
😃
@@BrassLock Hi Dav,
No ... still waiting :)
Hope all's well
Cheers
John
BDH
@@BlackDogHat Oh! Dear!
That's such a shame. Other people simply seem to change the sound track or the aspect ratio of bits they want to use, then just go ahead hoping its fair use for educational purposes or some such contrivance. Periscope Films has access to a huge stockpile of films they are restoring perhaps they could assist you in your search for suitable clips. Cheers.
What's the name of the village? I'd like to see how much this particular one has changed since 1942.
As John Rainer says, it is Lavenham, not much has changed except for motor cars and it's very posh.
Yes, it's Lavenham. The monument at 2.17 can be seen on Google maps at www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.1090993,0.7964307,3a,75y,45.56h,86.02t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1wOAhrUeSxyxq9bpPQRo0A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
@@davidhampson765 well I was allowed in
Filmed in the year 1942 BE
A time when each country had borders, and looked after their own people,much better world.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavenham
Now we are not dependent on the land. We are stuck, caught in a trap, where our modern lives are dependent on imports from Yankee Empire. We have been neutered.
All the mod cons, gas electricity and motor cars. What about Wi-Fi!
Ironic listening to the commentary about the ancient villages, housing and architecture, the same places the English were bombing in Germany for no reason other than the destruction of 1000 years of history.
I think you are getting mixed up with he Baedekker raids of 1942-43. That was a German philosophy, to target our history and centres of culture. Cities like Canterbury, wih no war production or strategic value suffered terribly.
And exactly what the Germans had done to Poland? Perhaps Germany should not have started the war?
@@neilsmith7174 Poland spent 20 years engineering this war.
@@neilsmith7174 Germany didn't start WW2, Hitler did.
@@richardcurry4912 Oh yes, to be conquered by their two mortal enemies, Germany and Russia. I'm sure that was right at the top of their list. After being taken over by The Soviet Union in 1945 the Polish saying was "The Soviet Union forever, but not a day longer".