The bungalow as he knew it in the East was a large, low, cool, white building surrounded by verandahs, as un-English in appearance as anything could be. But these bungalows are quite different, and seem to be thrown haphazard all over the place, along the main roads for miles beyond every town. Shoddy, ugly, vulgar shacks they are, recalling to his mind some of the worst aspects of life in the Middle West as depicted on the films. The materials of which they are constructed are cheap and nasty. Round each bungalow is a collection of smaller shacks, where the Baby Austin and the chickens live; and in place of embowering trees he sees a jungle of wireless poles and clothes-props. Untidiness, vulgarity, Americanism, discord of colouring and form, seem to have invaded every village through which he passes. Nor is this change confined to roads and buildings. The whole character of the villages is altered. Smocks and sunbonnets have gone for ever, and with them most of the old village crafts. The blacksmith’s day is done. Artificial-silk leg-wear and gramophone-records fill the windows of the village store, a blatant cinema has appeared next door, and most people do their shopping in London. So this is England! II. BEFORE THE DELUGE In order to understand the changes that have taken place in the English countryside during the last century or so, and in order to forecast probable future tendencies, one must first endeavour to analyse the charm of the unspoiled English village and landscape before coal and petrol began to dominate our whole life. That charm is universally admitted but not always rationally appreciated. To begin with, ruin in itself is not a worthy subject for admiration. An American critic is said to have observed to an Englishman: “What thoughtful people your ancestors were; they not only built churches for you to worship in but ruined abbeys for you to admire.”[1] The worship of ruin is a sign of decadence, though it has appeared from time to time in history for hundreds of years. There is a social, even a moral, reproach implied by the sight of a tumbledown cottage; and to the present writer’s mind a ruined church is as much inferior to a perfect church as a dead dog is to a live one. Nobody who really loves architecture can really love ruin; his admiration for the fragments of a great building only makes him wish he could see it in its original splendour. But there is a mellowness and softness that comes to a building with age, and that is a genuine æsthetic attribute. Moreover, the element of historical association is a legitimate cause for our pride in our old villages and towns, a cause by no means to be neglected in this survey. But, apart from these two factors, the charm of the English village, for our purpose, is to be judged strictly on appearances.