F E AT U R E John Roseveare and Archie Bashford
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Chalk, cherries and committees: Lessons from a hundred-year-old garden village Inspired by the ‘satisfaction of the needs of others’, a century-old village offers an inspiration for contemporary living.
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ust over a hundred years ago, in a remote field in the Chiltern Hills, the Quaker architect Fred Rowntree laid the first brick of a new rural idyll. The Buckinghamshire village of Jordans was described in its foundation document as a ‘social and industrial experiment’, a place mindfully designed for work and home life to harmoniously coexist. The 95-acre estate was to be governed and managed as a Friendly Society. The chief object set down in the founding document was: “to create a Village Community which will provide a fuller opportunity for the development of character and for self-expression than exists under ordinary conditions at the present time.” The related objects flowing from this were: “To acquire, develop, maintain and govern an estate at Jordans... by means of a Village Community to be founded in accordance with Christian principles and in a manner serviceable to the national well-being... and to promote the establishment therein of suitable industries on sound and just lines” and “to provide opportunities for training in citizenship, as well as manual, agricultural and other pursuits.” Under the heading ‘Village Industries’ – described as ‘an essential feature of the scheme’ – the document sets out what that might include: market gardening and fruit growing, poultry and beekeeping, building industries, the woodwork industry, a blacksmiths and wheelwright shop, plumbing, bricklaying and painting, and clothing industries. The ‘satisfaction of the needs of others’ was to be the primary object of the virtuous live/work life envisaged by the founders. Readers familiar with William Morris’ 1890 book News from Nowhere might recognise the backward-looking utopian inflection here, particularly the selfsufficiency and the ennobling qualities of craft. In a history of the village, published in 1969 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the village, there is a story of one tenant, seen trying to squeeze a piano into his new village house, being admonished for his frivolity by an observer who wondered out-loud: “Wouldn’t you be better off with a weaving loom?”
1. Jordans village store and GII listed houses © Archie Bashford
2. Village allotments © Archie Bashford
