Seven Lectures on the United Kingdom for use in India: Reissued for use in the United KingdomMackinder, Halford John
History
Seven Lectures on the United Kingdom for use in India: Reissued for use in the United Kingdom
Mackinder, Halford John
Great Britain
Some of the towns round the coast, however, are differently employed.
They depend not so much upon weekly markets as upon their fisheries.
Here is a scene at Yarmouth, with a number of old fishermen waiting
with their baskets on the quay for the return of the boats.
[Sidenote: 8. Newlyn Harbour.]
[Sidenote: 9. Landing Fish.]
In the next slide we have the fishing fleet of Newlyn, lying
sheltered in its harbour. And then we have a view of the boats on
their return deeply laden with their catch. Since Britain consists
of islands and has shores on all sides, the fisheries have much
importance.
But after all, if we would find the old life of England in which have
been reared the generations of men who have spread over the whole
world making the Empire and its commerce, we must go not only outside
London, but outside even the market and fishing towns into the rural
country.
[Sidenote: 10. A Country Road, Saintbury.]
Here is a road running past a farmhouse and cottages, with a flock of
geese in the foreground which are being reared for food in the winter.
[Sidenote: 11. A Village Street.]
[Sidenote: 12. Village Church and School.]
And here we enter a village, with its church visible up the street. A
village differs from a town in having no weekly market. It has fewer
shops, and is generally smaller. It is the place where the labourers
live who work on the surrounding farms. In its centre three buildings
generally stand near together. There is the church, not infrequently
several centuries old, and round the church is the churchyard with
the graves of twenty generations of the past villagers. Then there is
the school, and thirdly, there is the house of the clergyman. These
are the little institutions found in each of the several thousand
villages which are scattered at intervals of a mile or two over the
whole of the British Isles. Some of them contain two or three hundred
inhabitants, and some of them a thousand or twelve hundred.
[Sidenote: 13. Stoke Poges Church.]
Here is another village church, with a pointed spire instead of a
blunt tower. It is clothed, as you see, with creepers, and around
are the tombstones in the graveyard. There are generally bells
in the towers and spires of these country churches. On a bright
Sunday morning, when labour has ceased and the people take their
weekly rest, these bells ring merrily through all the green country
summoning the people, rich and poor, to assemble in the church for
the worship of God.
[Sidenote: 14. Cottages, Bisham, Berks.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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