By John Cole
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By John Cole
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The meaning of a map usually comes out in discussion as a group of people see the information building up. MAP ONE MAP TWO
On Map One are some of the main things seen by the church members from Bardney as they looked at the map as a whole. Map Two shows what they made of the detailed look at the village itself. Their main observation was that the parish falls into three distinct slices with a road running through them north/south. The main route, however, runs east/west through Bardney itself. The three slices: A: The Northern end: with three main clusters of houses - perhaps no more than 30 in all. Some light industry on the former airfield is reached from outside the parish. B: Bardney village: the focus of all activity (see below). C: Southrey: a totally self-contained small community with its own church, shop, pub and village hall. Only one road leads to it - a cul-de-sac. A ferry once linked the pub to another on the opposite bank of the River Witham. Now they are ten miles away from each other by car. Detailed observations from Map Two 1. Bardney village contains a remarkably wide range of community facilities—apparently only lacking a resident policeman and district nurse! Some things draw people away from the village (e.g. secondary education) but the shops and other facilities probably survive locally in what is a relatively small village simply because the distances are too great to the nearest towns. 2. Social activity in the village is also quite extensive probably for the same reason— though the whist drives in the village halls around the area seem to attract a touring clientele from far and wide! A village Directory published by the churches lists 21 clubs and organisations apart from the four churches themselves. If one could observe these groups over a period of time it might become clear that community life revolved round one of these more than the rest. Which organisation does everyone else defer to when it comes to fixing dates? 3. Communication within the village still seems to work on the basis of overlapping memberships between the organisations and neighbours talking to one another—with one notable exception: the residents of one new estate of bungalows are not finding it so easy to slot into village life, assuming they want to. A high proportion of them are newly retired from the South East of England and, of course, since they all moved in together, the only neighbours they have are each other! Questions need to be raised whether, in the long term, this natural networking will be adequate to maintain people’s involvement in community life, or whether some more systematic village-wide organ of publicity is needed. 4. Unlike many places, Bardney shows few signs of a division between council house dwellers and those on private housing estates. Geographically, large and small houses, old and new, rented and owner-occupied are all mixed together (with only a marginally greater concentration of council housing at the east end of the village) and the result is a good social mix as well. 5. Three of the churches are well-situated in the centre of the village. The Methodist and C. of E. churches stand directly opposite one another - reflecting a sad history of confrontation dating back to the days when Anglicans and Methodists both ran their own schools in the village. The story now is of friendship and considerable shared use of buildings. |
