ABSTRACT
This chapter explores changing conceptions of rurality as people move from middle-age into later life. It examines the meaning of ‘rural’ for older people living in British rural settlements, and the extent to which rural is seen less as an ‘idyll,’ and more as a contributory factor to social exclusion, when people reach their seventies and eighties. The chapter is informed by findings from a qualitative study of the social exclusion of people aged 75-and-over living within rural areas of mid-Lincolnshire (Key, 2005), a sparsely populated arable farming area in eastern England. The chapter suggests that it is in sparsely populated settlements that older rural residents are at greatest risk of exclusion from social relations and service provision. Such settlements may be the most likely places to have the ‘idyllic’ qualities (open green space, peace and quiet) that attract people to move to them earlier in the life course, but they typically lack the in situ service provision and support networks that older people require when their personal mobility declines.
