The scenery is still there. A lot more houses in the last 80 years but there were even fewer houses 80 years before then; and 80 years before that. Should we go back to when there were no people? There are a few years to yearn for those times but many more reasons to thank that it has gone. Life was incredibly hard; we didn’t know it at the time as it was easier than 20 years before then but, compared to now, it was a tough, tough life. Nothing like fridges or washing machines, no inside lavatories; no bathrooms; no central heating - life for the working family was hard. No job security - none of this employment law that protects many. Food rationing was still around. Rebuilding our industries was a priority; the prospect of WW3 was a daily reality. Living in the towns was tough; living in the country was tough. For most. For those who had money or land, life had few worries. For the rest of us, it was about survival and looking for a bit extra to make life better.

You are quite right how times have changed. I completely understand where you are coming from, we often have a rose tinted view of the past these days. It was indeed hard irrespective of pre WW1or indeed between and post WW2 etc. We have to be thankful for a lot we take for granted these days. My apologies.

@@marknelson5929 no apology needed. I’m guilty of the opposite of rose-tinted. Of course, we had good times and they were always (had to be) low or no cost. Outings with family, adventures with mates; we thought they were good times. Now I look back and see, in comparison, how difficult they were for my parents. Equally, I’m sure their parents were telling them how harder were their lives. Perhaps the truth is that each generation has it slightly easier? I used to cycle perhaps 6 or 7 miles to collect cockles. And then ride back with a bucket full on each handlebar (needed both for balance). Clean them, cook them and bottle them. Brilliant tea - freshly pickles cockles and bread and butter. My grandmother used to buy a sheep’s head. Very cheap. For a reason. She would then boil it and we would eat the results. Tongue? Lovely. Cheeks? Lovely. Brains? Dreadful. So two teas with very different memories for me.

I know...the same sort of thing has happened and is happening to my native New England. 🤬 Still, if we remember how it was and how good it was, just maybe we can bring it back again! 🌱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇺🇸

@Voeding 2.0 Agree.

@@comesahorseman Sir, we must all wake up before it is too late.

@@The_Geometrikam very true, sir! Be well!

@Pat Alessi Pat, no offense, but I'm not one to simply sit and pray...I'd much rather do something.

*English culture back then yes, the English countryside is still as beautiful.

"He migh be my cousin....we're all related round here"......definitely British Culture.

its still here

@@edwalker598 it is, but not in the abundance it once was

Oh come on, everything driving a desperately overdrawn Britain, post-war was powered by coal and gas! This is pure romanticism.

It's all been built on because everyone wants a separate house! Not that many years ago, single people, even professionals, would live in bedsitters or small flats. Now everyone wants a house. Every time a couple gets a divorce the need for housing one family now needs two. It's not immigration,talk to estate agents. The best agricultural land is the bit they always build on, even water meadows are drained for housing. People then want new roads because the old ones can't cope with the traffic,2-3 cars to a house isn't unusual now. Once you have new roads shops and garages pop up along them and more land is swallowed up. If you don't like it,use your high street,use the bus. Take in lodgers and stop using put of town developments 🤷 they only exist to make money,if we don't give them ours there's no incentive to build more!

Permanent residence! That, and a useful job! 😄

@3:25 is that the Crown Inn, Minchinhampton?

Vegetables?!

@@annother3350 huh. A blooming onion, maybe.

@@annother3350 Yeah maybe a pickled onion. Two if I'm feeling particularly healthy.

de-jane niles You mean the ‘old ways’ when we thought we could just keep pumping our industrial waste into those previously pristine waterways? Those old days when children died of, or were maimed by, childhood diseases? I was a 4 year old in 1951. I remember the choking smogs of those days. I wonder how many people who worked in those weaving mills died from the fibres that choked their lungs and how many families remembered their relatives who’d died in the mines. Every age has its benefits and its horrors. To not acknowledge that and imagine bygone days as something glorious and pristine is to fail to remember the harsh reality of many peoples’ lives which were often short, sharp and brutal.

@@kyoglesage well said

@Thao Brewster the second half of your comment contradicts the first half

@Thao Brewster Oh bull! As if drugs are a new invention. Back in the days people got drunk every night. You don't like drugs? Don't take any! Be happy you're a white, old dude that can get whatever he wants just because you're a white, old dude! Let other people have the same rights, that does not take away any of those rights from you. Human rights are not pie, anyone can have a fair share. And brainwashing can easily be avoided but it is up to you to get active!

@@michaelXXLF Brainwashing! Are you being serious or just being ironic. I should think most people of an average intelligence reading your comment would correctly identify who's the brainwashed one among us. Old white guy of privilege, I'm just surprised you didn't throw in a beard and that white as well.

I'm 20 and still ramble on my days off amongst the rivers Itchen and the last patches of forest that surround old Winchester. But iam deeply saddened that I missed out on the days in which you grew up, a seemingly more same Britain and world one where hard work was still done and nature was still somewhat untouched by plastic pollutants and sewage flows. But I keep making sure to travel and cherish as much of the natural beauty this god chosen Isla can offer before it fades.

Give me back my glorious country back.

Can you get the Middle Ages back? stupid question, the past is the past.

robert mcknight He didn’t literally mean can we go back in time

NO. This is because you need those people back.

We gave up on it - willingly.

that's right luv....Myra Hindley...Kray Twin's....Fred West....Peter Moore....lovely people....the fact that none of them were Knighted or given the OBE is a disgrace...!

russell king There are evil people in every country in the world, big or small, so of course England has had its share.

John Google Yes, me too.

@Pat Alessi Luxury ! We used to dream about living in a cardboard box, not that we had much sleep mind.

laughinggravy2 Not sure where you live, but I’ve never heard any of those accusations!

L.P. Hartley - 'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.' You beat me to it!

I was born in England in 1958. Don’t let my nickname fool you - I’m white anglo Saxon! Things have changed so much in my 62 years, some for the better, but a lot more for the worse.

@@dnr2089 your name is wild👍🏻👍🏻

Life was hard that's why it was simple. In hard times you appreciate the simple things in life. So may this current crop of folks who are living in quarantining may actual appreciate the everyday things. You can see the essence of a modern world when the narrator talks about how wool is exported. Now so much is exported.

I would submit that it was good *because* it was hard; we valued what we had.

My parents took off to the antipodes just at the time that British economy/life was improving.

Matthew Sell, thank you for your uplifting reply 💕

@Steve Slade guess the American Indians are thinking the very same about you!

Your tales of modern day Stroud are all very well and good Mr Mathew Sell...... But can you smoke yer pipe when you're out riding your horse.

Just as most countries we need controlled immigration, especially with the automation of jobs meaning we don't need workforce replacement bit the elite want to see all patriotism destroyed

@Steve Slade With attitudes such as yours your doing a fantastic job of destroying the usa with out any outside help at all...............very sad

It's a brief snapshot into a vanished world so little like our one yet so near

It’s the loss of our Gypsies I most regret. We’ve all been robbed by our so called authorities. Bunch of scumbags, every one of them.

Farmers ! They’re nothing more than the Gorger scum who stole the land and starved us all. Bastards every one.

Consumerism became everything. Fly tipping and US-style takeaway containers littering everything. And factory-fed chickenshit and factory-fed human shit in the rivers and brooks. “Little traffic disturbs the peaceful Green, and long may it remain so” 😂😂😂😂😂😂 England IS cars. The car-lovers paradise. 3 outside every house, throw the litter from the car-windows. Drive half a mile to the chip shop. Cars, like consumerism, became everything to the Modern Brit. Car-culture helped us consume olde England. The presence of them seen and smelled and heard everywhere. They take all of our money and all of our time. And we love them more than anything. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ And by the 1960s it was all over, so they are just now filling in the gaps. Subtopia. A vast junk heap.

How very true, during the lockdown we had pheasants and hares walking up and down the main street, you could hear all the birds no cars no planes it was bliss, just goes to show we're not that far from it still once modernity has been held at bay, maybe more people working from home would lead to the reduction in traffic that would in some way help to relive those more peaceful times out in the sticks.

... and misplaced apostrophes from nationalists who are anxious to conserve everything but their own language.

Funny thing, this film was an image of England which was an evil nightmare to only a generation before. That generatoon saw machines like this as the advance guard of capitalism and the destruction of rural life, no wonder they went to breaking them, Captain Swing and Luddites both. Britain's enslavement to steam and coal and more more more for fewer and fewer. Like the enclosing of the commons before that. The underlying problem remains unchanged right up to today: the concentration of wealth at the expense of the many, into the hands of the few.

@@markofsaltburn Apostrophe Nazi

Patriotic Alternative all the way✊🏻

And half of Africa

@@antonk.2748 British people stayed and fought for our country.

100%. It breaks my heart seeing what has happened to our once beautiful proud nation. Our politicians are to blame for our lose, and we are to blame for allowing them to get away with it.

@@juliamarple3058 What happened to the nation then? Because last time I checked the average Brit earns more, has a higher standard of living, lives longer and travels more than in the 1950s or at any time in history for that matter. Can someone please stop this irrational nostalgia for "the good old times" that weren't actually all that great when you look realistically at peoples lives not at some ideal world of tranquility depicted in a movie.

@@juliamarple3058 There's no way of doing anything about it: how could you overturn and replace our utterly corrupt political system that's controlled by supranational interests ?

This was the end of the golden age. Soon after this was made mass immigration happened.

Yeh non money but they still had government war rations for 4 more years. Life was tough.

@@annother3350 Lifes tough now ,working for the money system, constant debt, bills, no one happy ,blm, terrorists, etc etc. back then we where English and proud and free.

That war ruined Europe. Any one who advocates for our people is now a fascist. But at least we are not speaking German i suppose.

@@teddydixon6875 so true, the way things have turned out makes one wonder why we even fought against the Germans....

Yep. The march of 'progress' - little pockets can still be found, but they'll be from quite old people. We had a bit of dry stone wall fixed by an old fella recently. They're the only ones that do it. No young people are interested in this anymore - and even the older guys are more into the nostalgia than anything else. Most of them are not even the last of the line, they are the kids of the last of the line - the line having vanished with their fathers. What remains is just a tiny flame of what we have lost.

If there was enough demand to fix dry stone walls im sure people would meet that demand. There are plenty of micro brewers and artesanal food companies. The demand has to exist

@@annother3350 There's not enough people who want to do the work, but there's plenty of work to be had. I've chatted with 3 different masons who fix stone walls and they all say the same thing - it's the old fella's keeping this going and most of them have tried to retire, but there's so much work, they just can't turn it all down. Nobody else wants to do it. Maybe that will change, but it could also mean the end of these amazing walls over time.

@@matthewtrow5698 Sometimes things have got to move on though. People said British people no longer want to work harvesting fields but when the opportunity came 10,000 people applied in a day and crashed the website. So people are willing to work in the countryside but maybe we have to move on from dry stone walls like the egyptians moved on from Pyramids. ;o)

@@annother3350 Dry stone walls are exceptionally useful and very environmentally friendly. They are a haven for wildlife of all kinds. They also look a lot better than wire fences. There's nothing to move on from here, they are a solid and sound way to wall off areas of land and look beautiful. We can only hope that in a country that is now expecting to have a high level of unemployment, young people may take up the craft - you can make good money from it. As for Brits working in the countryside, that really would be fantastic - but the pay would need to be higher than it is now. We would then be expected to pay more for the soft fruit/vegetables that are still harvested by hand. For some people, that would be welcome if it meant more employment, for others, it would be an extreme hardship to see food prices increase. Migrant labour gave us cheap vegetables and fruit, there's no way around this simple fact. Many of those who applied were put off by the fact they were expected to live on the site where they worked, in provided accommodation that they felt was unfit for them. It also didn't fit in with their lifestyles. If you already have a house, a place to live - why would you want to live in a caravan or portahome with many other people? The people who applied wanted to commute to the farms. Most farms don't work that way, they can't, the hours are long and they aren't setup to accept commuting farm workers. It is backbreaking labour - I know this myself, having spent a year working on farms picking fruit and vegetables. I also lived on a farm for seven years. The owner of the land had tried many times to hire local people to help around the farm. None of them lasted more than a few months. They couldn't cope with the hard graft. The polish farm hands could. So he hired them. I recall that he kept sheep for a season - to grass feed them - and had to get them sheared. There was nobody to do it, but groups of Australians and Kiwis, who came over in the summer months to work farms up and down the country, to shear sheep. Many farmers don't even keep their own combine harvesters these days - it's outsourced. The cost is too exorbitant, but the outsourced guys can work multiple farms, so it works out fine for them.

If you could step of this mortal coil now to show an example that would be great.

Well getting rid of the less intelligent, racist and ignorant people would be a good start. I live in the south west and it’s just fine and dandy. Perhaps you would return to candles for lighting and outside cludgies with cut up daily mail newspaper squares as toilet paper. I’m sure you have plenty of those to use.

katie perry the ones whose nations we raped, pillaged and enslaved for our countries own gain you mean. Well done.

@@amayastrata4629 Sorry when did the British do that? Not in my life time. Have a go at Italy and the f....king Romans for a change. I dont blame the Germans of today for WW2 either.

dulls ah yes, not me gov syndrome. How typical.

And the grinding work and poverty, cold houses, outside toilets, no washing machines, I could go on...

I don't know what's the matter with you. You're expressing a very false wisdom. I was born and brought up and worked in such a place [without the cloth industry], from 1949 to 1969, in Derbyshire; and after that in other similarly peaceful rural places in England and Scotland, with sensible and sensitive traditional ideas predominating in the local people. Nothing in this film contradicts my experience, and none of my experience contradicts anything in the film. This sort of reality did 'really exist' in many places. Of course there were many other places where things were much less harmonious. But that's no reason to paint all places with the same brush, coloured with your own necessarily-limited studies, just because you just happened not to be fortunate enough to have experienced good wholesome traditional English country life. I don't mean to be rude. And I did like your well-put appreciation of the ethos itself. Thank you.

@@robwilde855 You're right, Rob. I live here in the Stroud Valleys close to Stroud and it's still beautiful. Greatest place on Earth (but I am a bit biased)

If it didn't exist, how did they film it? You are claiming this film is not real?

Look up the history of the wool mills in the West Country to see the heritage that brought wealth to the area. The red cloth produced in this film was used for the officer's jackets of the British Army. There is the Stroud Valley Textile Trust for s start and the whole valley along the Frome River and Canal was a corridor of woollen mills which stand to this day. www.google.co.uk/search?sa=N&sxsrf=ALeKk01fRW2XSTtUyfrj5jvBr5tMGSL34Q:1595383227824&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=wool+factory+in+Stroud&ved=2ahUKEwigvMzU4d_qAhW_RBUIHZYuCI84ChCwBHoECAoQAQ&biw=1242&bih=597

Stroud still produces the fabric that covers all the tennis balls used for Wimbledon so this is not fiction - visit www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3668334/New-balls-Inside-factory-distinctive-fluffy-yellow-fabric-cover-Wimbledon-tennis-balls-100-years.html

The BFI is full on SJW

Because every British institution has been taken over by the radical left.

Ironically the rainbow was and is the symbol of Gods promise not to drown the land in water... He mentions fire later...

Women wore hats and headscarves back then. Men covered their heads with appropriate hattage, too. Gloucestershire was once famous for hat making.

That must have been fun 10 hours a day

Martin Beberman yes we have great cider in Ireland. Bulmers ciders Are world famous. Especially in summer.

I remember grampa / granny taking me ELY market ( South Wales ) in a gambo with 2/3 Bobby calves in the back

For the record, I thought 'The West Country' was defined as Cornwall, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire and (I think) Wiltshire.

Gloucestershire is in the west of England,nothing to dispute about that. I really don't see why southern counties like Devon,Somerset etc would feel a need to identify with Gloucs. I also cannot accept that Gloucs or any part of it is in the Midlands. Oh yeah,and Gloucs isn't a country.

"Diversity" as in the dance group or "Diversity" as in "Bloody foreigners!" ?

"before transgender madness, and men marrying men" hate to break it to ya, but that's been around longer than England as a polity has

No, please don’t go on. It’s a shame we didn’t lose bigots like you to history too.

They used globalisation to outsource the wool supply to NZ... It was only a matter of time before the factories were as well. This is what happens when you don't have a protectionist government. From what I heard the machines here would've replaced so many weavers huts which turned safe work into kids having to scamper under running machines to catch threads where they could lose body parts. They also used to weight clocks so people worked longer, time is money.

@@bens1972 "Bigots" built the greatest civilizations in history. Don't you dare forget that, cur.

What in god's name are you blathering about?

"...politics without principle..." (Gandhi)

Go three miles outside a town or city it's still just as white

@@annother3350 Not even close.

@@TheOneAndOnlyZeno1889 It sure fucking is

@@annother3350 Praise god if you still live in a entirely white populated part of England -if not, stay in denial.

@@TheOneAndOnlyZeno1889 Denial -- I travel -- it's fact. The UK is still 80% white and when you go a few miles out of town you hardly see any other races. Not really sure why you have a problem with that. I'm all for controlled immigration etc.

I don't think so.

As explained in the video, cheap imports killed it. Joys of capitalism.

@@MrAlistar99 the Stroud valleys still look like this

And the laziness of a generation to do physical labour, that's what made the crack that immigration is flowing to fill.

@@inotaarto8719 'laziness' or the fact that it doesn't pay anything like enough to actually live. Source: have spent more summers than I care to mentioned throwing hay bales around for next to no money.

oh yes, i lived in a perishing cold farmhouse up until 2005 and all my life. food was basic but good because everyone did a garden and shared produce so bottled plums in the depth of winter and always lots of home grown veg and fruit in the deep freeze. lead lattice window and the curtains fluttering with the window shut. breath frozen on the edge of the bed sheets. hands too cold to write. .