Where community spirit takes wing; Mary Lean visits Bergh Apton, an English village which shows what communities can do when they get going

For A Change, August-Sept, 2004 by Mary Lean

The Countryside Agency, statutory 'watchdog and champion' of England's rural areas, has been devoting a lot of mental energy recently to developing ways of measuring 'community vibrancy'. Perhaps its researchers should spend a weekend, as I have just done, in the south Norfolk village of Bergh Apton, a community which positively explodes with creativity.

At first sight, Bergh Apton doesn't seem to have a lot going for it, apart from the beautiful countryside around it. There's no school or pub, no cottages clustered around a picturesque green, no high street to stroll along, no geographical heart. Because it started out as two villages, Bergh and Apton, its 187 houses ate scattered in clusters linked by narrow country lanes. The church is over a mile from the village hall and the shop.

These apparent disadvantages have helped Bergh Apton to resist the expansion which threatens many rural communities. England is experiencing the reverse of the developing world's flight to the cities, with net migration into the countryside standing at over 100,000 a year. But there ate no new housing developments at Bergh Apton, though many older homes have been extended. This has the upside of preserving the village's unspoilt charm--and the downside of pushing house prices beyond the reach of young local people. As in most rural areas, most of Bergh Apton's population is middle-aged or older.

In spite--or because--of this, Bergh Apton's 420 inhabitants are not short of energy. In 1997, 1999 and 2002, they drew thousands of visitors and raised a total of over 60,000 [pounds sterling] for charity by opening their gardens as exhibition spaces for sculpture. Between these events they found time to stage a pageant for the Millennium, and to support a host of different societies and projects--including the Conservation Trust (which manages the village's nature reserve), arts and crafts workshops (a spin-off of the Sculpture Trails), a youth club and the Bergh Apton and District Society (which arranges talks and trips). And don't for one minute think that this lets them out of running a village fete!

It's hard to pin down quite what it is that sets Bergh Apton apart from other active villages, but there does seem to be something in the water--or the spirit of the inhabitants--that makes people take initiative for the common good.

Take, for instance, the two young mothers who decided to stop moaning about the lack of a mother and toddler group and start their own--the first in the area for 20 years. Or two other mothers who raised the money for the village's state-of-the-art play area. Or the two brothers who gave up their careers to run the post office--the only one in the five nearest villages--after their parents died.

Take Evie Sayers, who grew up in the village, and with her late husband Tony raised 40,000 [pounds sterling] to address cardiac risk in young people after their 18-year-old son died of a heart attack. Or Chris Johnson, a painter and decorator who has become the world authority on a crucial World War II battle in Assam in which his father fought.

The village is full of extraordinary people. The Chair of the Parish Council (the lowest tier of local government) spent eight years living on an otherwise uninhabited island off the Welsh coast with her husband and two small children; one of her colleagues was a ports organizer for the Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race; one of the District Councillors, who was raised in the local market town, is an internationally acknowledged expert on Korean culture and cuisine.

Then there are the originators of the Sculpture Trails, Pat Mlejnecky, an English teacher married to a Czech, and Maria Phillips, who came to Britain in 1947 as a young refugee when the Communists came to power in Czechoslovakia. She was awarded an MBE for helping to set up the Citizens' Advice Bureau in the Czech Republic after the rail of Communism.

If you scratch beneath the surface in any village you'd probably final equally remarkable people. But there's something at Bergh Apton that encourages them to thrive and work together.

The parish clerk, Lorie Lain-Rogers, traces the village's ethos back to 1980, when the owner of the Manor House, Major Colin Mackenzie, was appointed as Church Treasurer. 'He persuaded the Church Council and the Village Hall Management Committee, which had previously run the annual fete in his grounds on its own, to work together to raise funds,' she says. 'The first year was a struggle, but subsequently we discovered how much more we could do together than separately.' The two committees went on to cooperate with the Parish Council in running 'Welcome' evenings for newcomers to the village. The experience has formed the base for most initiatives since.

TOO LONG A WORD

Pat Mlejnecky sees the village as a pattern of what other communities could achieve if they only tried. 'People say, "Nothing happens in my community," but what's stopping them?' she asks. When she retired from teaching 14 years ago, she felt it was time to get involved locally. She and Maria organized an Open Gardens event which went through several permutations over the years before evolving into the Sculpture Trail. 'I have a horror of getting stuck into a rut,' Pat explains.