1920s – a decade of exploring concerns for the countryside
Cambridgeshire Rural Community Council received funding from the Carnegie Trust and on May Day 1925, the inaugural meeting took place at King’s College, Cambridge, with Lord Lieutenant Charles Adeane CB JP as its chairman.
Some of the Council’s earliest pioneering work included supporting communities to build village halls, providing lectures for a comprehensive programme of adult education, music and drama to cultivate the mind, supporting rural industries to collaborate and pioneering new ideas.
The Council’s approach was to bring together public organisations and charities to collaborate in finding solutions for the concerns identified.
Building village halls
There was a need for social meeting space with many villages still meeting in barns, cottages and schools. The Council was allotted a sum of money from the Development Fund through the National Council of Social Service for the purpose of making interest-free loans to assist the building of village halls in the county. The first villages to benefit from a loan were Weston Colville and Orwell.
Cultivating the mind
To improve standards of education and village social life, a series of lectures. Topics included international agriculture, co-operative farming, international travel, books and reading, Napolean and extinct monsters! Attendees paid 2 shillings and 6 pence to attend and in six months 48 lectures were arranged.
A motor omnibus brought instructors out of Cambridge to give these talks and also ran a passenger service. In its first year, it carried 761 passengers and travelled 6,072 miles across villages.
Supporting rural industries
A Cambridgeshire Craftsmen’s Society was formed to bring together trades and craftsmen for mutual support. It’s 53 members included woodworkers, builders, blacksmiths, farriers and saddlers from 19 villages.
Support was given to a group of woodworkers to form a co-operative and work from premises in Babraham that took orders from local landowners and farmers. They manufactured and sold corn bins, wheelbarrows, tables, cupboards, dog kennels, pig crates, feeding troughs, meat safes, egg trays, gate posts and ladders. This then extended to other premises being opened at Barrington, Bourn, Barton and Brinkley.
