About 100 Rural Years
This website is brought to you by Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) – read more about ACRE in the Places section.
ACRE is the national body for an alliance of 38 local community development agencies. These groups trace their origins back to the Rural Community Councils established after WWI by the National Council of Social Service; in fact, some of them pre-date even that time.
We are entering a heady time of celebrations as many of the local community development agencies come up to celebrating their centenaries. This website presents historical perspectives, biographies and personal accounts of community development within rural England. But these are not objective academic studies; they are first-hand experienced accounts from citizen-historians who have lived and worked on the rural frontline for much, if not all, of their lives.
You can browse their works in the Stories section, where you will also see their own biographical provenance.
But more than this. We also bring you anecdotal recollections from everday members of our rural communities – because for over 100 years the story of rural community developmenthas been a story of individual community volunteers. This is not a sector that has been massively funded and centrally organised, ever. It has always been the dedicated efforts of individual citizens that has ensured a better rural community, a better rural England; and we wanted a platform that could recognise, and honour the work of all those vilage hall tombola attendents, community shop assistants and good neighbours; amongst many, many others.
We thank you for stopping by and taking an interest in our interest in the work of generations of others; why not start in the very hub of community: The Village Hall?
Possibly England’s oldest village hall, a 15th century house in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire.
You can also review all the materials from the Proof-of-Concept that gave rise to this website: HERE