Little did these people know, that they were living in the last best days of Britain.

@Blackmamba12345

4 ай бұрын

No, it was a hard life. Manual physical labour in any weather, and poor standard of living esp for working class.

@DDandrums

4 ай бұрын

Would you like to expand on that statement?

@twiglet2214

4 ай бұрын

It's easy to romanticize about the past - the good old days - when everything was apparently better than it is now ! Every generation does it.

@wearetheremnants1615

4 ай бұрын

R.ip

@wearetheremnants1615

4 ай бұрын

​@@Blackmamba12345and now nobody can afford anything but has a few electronic toys to keep them quiet whilst they are filleted alive by the vile 4x2s(Tory's/labour)

All gone now..and within one lifetime. Alas what became of my once great country.

@elizaandalisa

4 ай бұрын

I feel so sad about the old country ah well as ned Kelly said such is life cheers n beers Marty Australia

@me890092

3 ай бұрын

The Rickinghalls and Botesdale is still a thriving community. The working environment is much changed from 75 years ago, but time marches on. I'm sure most residents in 1948 would rather have the reliable mains water and street lighting of today than what they had to put up with back then.

@Phil-io4mj

Ай бұрын

@@me890092 Water and street lighting are material things. I would hazard a guess that it was loss of aesthetic, moral character and spirit that was lamented. They are not mutually exclusive.

Thanks, I was born & brought up in the happy days into a farming family. We were also Suffolk people. Now I am very old & no longer live in that part of the world. I never want to go back but just remember those days. Sadly during my days in Suffolk it changed with a loss of our way of life. It was taken over by second home owners (mainly from London ) who did not understand our way of life & took control & pushed us out.

@wearetheremnants1615

4 ай бұрын

Now foreigners own most of the property and Britain itself

Living close to the land, relying on one another, celebrating together, times gone by - thanks for this loving chronicle of the past ❤

I lived in Rickinghall in the 1980s. I recognise the pub and village shop. It was very much a dormitory village when I lived there as the mechanisation of farming meant that far fewer people were required to work on the land. Much changed from when this was filmed. A lovely look back to a bygone era.

A remarkable confection of nostalgia which plucks at the romantic heart-strings of many of us, most of whom will never have lived a day in that England of the past. However, it must be said that rationing was in force and would continue for a few more years...people lived in cities in squalid conditions and the NHS was hardly one year old. In 1949 when this film was made, the Sterling crisis devalued the pound against the dollar from "$4.04 to $2.80...times were tough...and a world apart from this charming portrayal of life in rural England just 4 years after the end of WW2 in September '45. One might almost regard the East Anglian Education Authority as an accomplished propaganda wing of the British government, at that time. Don't mistake my observations as negative judgement of a bygone rural idyll...I am as seduced by the wholeheartedness and simplicity of those days as much as the next person. I watch this film and think it is a true reflection of an era between the world wars which had already passed. I believe that the tipping point was well behind us by 1949. Consider that within 15 years the Beeching Report would lead to the closure of 5000 miles of track and more than 2000 stations... and the loss of so many associated jobs. Most poignantly of all, it was heartbreaking that so many young men, and some women, who would normally have worked the land in this film of 1949, had in reality lost their lives in foreign fields just a few summers before.

@thecuttingsark5094

4 ай бұрын

Maybe we could work to have the best of both worlds? We seem to have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

@1celloheaven

4 ай бұрын

Most reasonable people would agree with you, as I certainly do. I have no doubt that the values of neighbourliness, friendship, and the nuclear family are similar in the hearts and minds of most folk within our shores and indeed beyond. Regrettably history shows clearly that these aspirations are so often sabotaged by a tiny minority of ambitious megalomaniac individuals who are driven by greed and a perverse aspiration to power...we see this today on our doorstep in Europe and many would say also in the Middle East. What seems to underlie the ethos of these people is a disregard for human life.Ultimately this absence of humanity will continue to diminish the possibility of 'the best of both worlds' as you expressed. @@thecuttingsark5094

@martinwarner1178

3 ай бұрын

@@1celloheaven Excellent comment. Would you care to identify a group? Maybe name a family of our leaders? And their 'hangers on', should not be hard, The House, where our leaders gather is full of them! Peace and goodwill.

@1celloheaven

3 ай бұрын

Indeed Martin. The 'house' with hangers-on is still with us and no doubt any one of a number of long-established families. Plus ca change ...@@martinwarner1178

An idyllic film of a way of life which mostly doesn't exist anymore - a hard but honest way of life, little changed from their parents, with little of the mechanisation we take granted for today. And lets not forget that it was in this immediate post-war period that the English landscape really started to change with the wholesale removal of a lot of hedges. After the Second World War, government policy encouraged hedge removal to ensure that Britain was self-sufficient in food. Financial incentives were available to remove hedgerows and machinery was developed that couldn't manoeuvre in small fields.

I was born a Derbyshire lad many long years ago and life back then was similar to this beautiful film. As years went by many a good field was used for building houses and little by little our life and land was eroded to almost nothing where i lived. My heart aches now when i think back to innocent times when i was a lad.

I love these old films so much

@richbutler718

4 ай бұрын

Yes they were lovely days with no technology

I wish we had those days back again.Farmers daughter from Ireland☘️

@johnnybowte2711

4 ай бұрын

Me to, see my comment above. Keep safe

Excellent film. Thank you xxx

One of Englands finest ,the late great Basil Brown of Sutton Hoo fame lived here for many years . I'm told the village church has a memorial window for him

@billymarlene380

4 ай бұрын

His house had a blue plaque fitted recently too.

It is difficult to believe that it was only 21 years later, in 1970, that I spent part of the summer in rural East Anglia. It already looked very different then. I think it was then that I began to understand the poetry of John Claire as elegies for a way of life destroyed by the carelessness of "progress". We needed cheaper food, and some folk needed to "maximise profit". But the loss involved was great.

It is easy to look back through rose tinted spectacles, the film portrays it as a little too good. However life in a rural village was often a drudge, living in a tied cottage, it was very difficult for a Farm Worker to leave and work in another industry. It wasn't all bad of course. I speak from first hand experience, I was lucky and did manage to escape, and get a proper profession, and retire with a good pension in our own house. When I left school in 1963 we had 17 farm staff on 1500 acres, when I left there were 4, and I wasn't replaced. It is good that the history for the time, and I would say late 40s has been documented, although some of it is pre WW2.

We had one farmer whose farm never saw mechanisation, (only horse drawn) until He died in 1963). Wartime accelerated the rate of mechanisation in Britain. (In the 1950's most farms in My village had machinery like a Binder, a reaper, a thresher, rusting in a field and the village sawmill was still powered by a visiting steam engine). This was a wonderful film to see - so many boyhood memories - Thank You.

beautiful ...takes me back to those golden days of england.

If only times like this were with us now. Wonderful film.

Simply beautiful, I grew up in Stratford St Mary a beautiful Suffolk Village. Happy carefree days as a child by river and wheat field ♥️

Wow. Great film. I grew up in a Norfolk village in the 50's. This is exactly as I remember it, even down to the coming of the combine harvester. As a child growing up, it was idyllic. We left in 1960 for a better life. Did we find it? Yes and No.

Our lost country. Gone but still in the memory

I remember when horses still pulled ploughs etc, my father was a farm labourer, though in Wales, not England. There were many advantages to growing up among such a rural way of life, and even a ride along narrow lanes, on a horse drawn cart among the sacks of wheat on its way to the mill. But life was hard and not at all all pleasant, and much as I feel it was probably right for me, and there was a lot of magic in living close with nature, yetI wouldn't want to live through it again.

this film brings back wonderful memories for me of the Barker family I used to control deer & foxes at their farms beech tree walnut kiln & falcans hall. I got to know the family from1992 when i moved to Wattisfield from Aust. Richard had shown me these films before .I passed through there in jan.this year & my how it had changed progress I suppose

This film is well served by your elegant prose

What a lovely film, by the end I felt as though I was there with them .

Very good, thank you. It's very important to have film records of ordinary peoples lives and environments of the past.... this is our history.

My parents remembered it all, and before any mechanisation at all, early in the 20th century........ Only a very years after WW2, horses were still very much around as tractors and other farm machinery had only arrived with lease-lend from the USA, during the war. There used to be an abandoned seed drill just outside of where I worked in the 1970's, with a plate on it - a gift from the farmers of Canada, or something very like. People don't appreciate the vast changes over a few years. Even wheat had to change enormously - for reaper-binding and then threshing, the plant grew tall (long straw), and the grain had to stay in the ear to withstand handling before threshing. Wheat for combining is short and the grain only just stays in the ear long enough to make it to the threshing part of the combine. With horses still around, most farm grew some oats to feed them. Sad to think that very, very few of the people shown will still be with us.

Enjoyed that! Thanks

thank you

Wonderful times, never to return.

The book 'Akenfield' refers: is a must read.

The wireless the only remaining link with the distant world, absolute Heaven.

Love it!

Back when houses smelled of damp, telegraph poles lined the roads and elm trees lined the fields.

On the map @0:33 they showed the village to be in Norfolk but it is in Suffolk. What else did they get wrong?

So nice to see so few cars. I live in London, surrounded by Muslims, and so few English, so it's nice to see England with just English people. Sadly a time gone which could now never come back.

@me890092

3 ай бұрын

Why don't you just say what you mean. White people.

Shame its still not like this now!

once englands green and pleasant land, shame on our leaders for making it a third world country now.

Hard times, but great times to be British

It is a great loss to everyone when a good way of life is snuffed out, many of the old ways of life were the best.

Better pace of life and healther ❤😊😊😊

Love the pronunciation, & look at the old Fstm likely built on the original Saxon Manor House, England is so special

This is from a time when fields were still small and had corner ponds, there were full hedges and tractors weren't very powerful and fertiliser was expensive. Since then the hedges have been pulled up and now we have massive fields that are ploughed by huge tractors that can operate by SatNav. The way of life has gone, the wildlife has gone and so has the beauty of the countryside - its called progress. Where I live in a small valley in the West Country there used to be a dozen small farms all milking a few cows, now there are two with herds in the 100s. In the US they have herds in the 10,000s! There was a fire at one ranch last year when 18000 cows burned to death in the sheds and there was only one person at the ranch.

Lived nearby in Ixworth in early 90s happy days. The narrator sounds a bit like Oliver Postgate from Nogin the Nog fame

2.55 They are pulling a plough - they are harrowing - time flies in Rickinghall!

As a Scot I liked going to England. It was so different.

These people were so lucky. They lived in the England as it used to be. Unfortunately everything has changed for the worse now. I still love going to Suffolk. But second home owners have destroyed a lot of it. And so many country pubs are closing down. All of this country is now changing for the worse. Happy memories. Great video.

that young girl would be about my mums age now --90!!

Lovely times when everyone mucked in and helped each other. No reason why the country could not be self sufficient on home grown food and fruit, no need for expensive importation of the same, while putting people out of jobs. You ate what was in season and we’re happy about it. It’s a horrible world now.

NB Although the film is dated as being from 1949, it is not. At 04:06 the flyer gives the date as 'Thursday 28th October'. That date was a Friday in 1949. The actual date is a year earlier, 1948. Thank you.

@SteveMatthews54

4 ай бұрын

I guess it was filmed in 1948, but wasn't released until 1949.

Completely different now unfortunately, we used to take our few pigs to be slaughtered at the butchers there until it was sold for houses. We also ferreted the garden in the old post office almost up until it closed, hard work but better times in my opinion!!

@SteveMatthews54

4 ай бұрын

I used to go to that butcher's for a fresh turkey on Christmas Eve.

@davezoom2682

4 ай бұрын

Many times I have warmed my frozen hands on the gearbox of the tractor I was driving .

Technology has done us no favours. Pushed the world forward too fast, no wonder so many want to get off. Time to take stock and put further technology on hold until people can catch up.

I'm from Norfolk so shouldn't really be watching this... Lovely old film ; how many furrows was the Cat pulling, think it was 3 and not struggling either! Standard Fordson N on petrol.

@robwilde855

4 ай бұрын

Four.

Reminded me of the book Akenfield by Ronald Blythe. Terrible poverty for some.

Idyllic - yes the film does present an idyllic picture with much that is lovely. But it leaves a lot out; most of the work available was the hard grinding work of a poorly paid agricultural labourer ( if you had an accident or illness then what?), very limited job prospects for young people, poor housing, poverty. Women were especially badly off - stuck in the village ( the nearest town was 20 miles away)& virtually no employment outside the home. Nice to see the blokes enjoying a pint at the pub but no women insight. The W.I. was started to try & address the extreme isolation experienced by many rural women so it's not surprising their once a month meetings were much appreciated. This film is really a piece of beautifully crafted propaganda & I am surprised so many people have fallen for it.

@SteveMatthews54

4 ай бұрын

It was produced by the Central Office of Information, presumably to cheer people up after the war.

@edwardwest5035

4 ай бұрын

Not nearly as bad as the propaganda being fallen for about our current times.

@annoyingbstard9407

4 ай бұрын

I have to agree. Most rural towns had a workhouse, because that’s where you ended up once the farmers had no further use for you when he got some new piece of equipment or,you became too old. There’s a reason people flocked to the cities during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the reason is you could at least could get a roof over your head.

Always thought it was a beautiful village. Never see it since the bypass was built. IIRC the chip shop was fired by coal until they banned it being used for the frying.

@SteveMatthews54

4 ай бұрын

After the storm of 1987 the electricity was out for 3 days, and the chip shop was the only place where you could get a hot meal.

Just think if you was to tell the folk back then that almost the entire farm labour in the years to come would be staffed by so many people from overseas and all the problems that come with them , If you wanted to return to a farming job now I for one wouldn't want to work amongst all theses overseas people . Nothing like being around your own kind . All history now this film THE PAST all gone never to return .

@MikeAG333

4 ай бұрын

Not even trying to hide your racism....

Thank you. Could you tell us who the narrator was, very much of the time. Could it be Geoffrey Keane ?

@SteveMatthews54

4 ай бұрын

Sorry, I've no idea.

Hard work makes happy people and visa versa

Yer and them days will never return it is so sad when England was England look at now it is so frightening

@MikeAG333

4 ай бұрын

When England was England, and grammar and punctuation were entirely foreign concepts.

What happened to the country ? So sad.

@shirleydrury5565

4 ай бұрын

This country has gone to the dogs we are finished .so so sad 😢😢😢

Some very rise tinted views of the past expressed in the comments. Low wages, tied housing, high infant mortality……..

@fatfrreddy1414

4 ай бұрын

meagre but REAL food..freedom for us kids to go/play wherever...travelling with others on reliable pulic transport;few cars on our streets..Schoolteachers who loved their jobs...

The sad start of Industrial farming !!!

God Bless our Allies as we Navigate Again a trying time on our Planet and within our Democracy. Please Fight Against another Hitler-edtvTime. How horrible a thought. We must learn from the Past to Create a Better Future for All. Remember ,left We Forget... These trying times for humanity.✌️🙏💙🇺🇲 ♥️✌️🇬🇧

@doloresmyatt9737

4 ай бұрын

The government have already started the war drums banging and Lab and Lib will do the same.If you don't want war vote for an independent party otherwise it will be death and ration books.

@paulniggel

4 ай бұрын

If you are alluding to the russia Ukraine problem look no further than the USA & UK they have caused this they are the NAZIs

Yep! Like living through two world wars.😂😂

I get the rural idyll part of people's reactions to this, but the film is itself idealised and nostalgic, and why should the commentary be in bland standard English and not a good Suffolk dialect? Truth is the children of these people often chose the freedom and flexibility of modern life over semi-feudal restrictions of the countryside. By this time the world had already moved on.

No McDonald's KFC Costa coffee mobile Phones

Scurvy rickets typhoid tiburculosis, and then there's rationing no running water and not getting paid properly ever. Yeah, great days. Out of touch Tories need to understand they are responsible for the decline.

A shame it was dubbed with voices without a local accent.