ABSTRACT
In 1943 the eminent agricultural economist C.S.Orwin conducted a comprehensive survey of an area of north Oxfordshire with a team of researchers from the Oxford Agricultural Economics Research Institute. The study was subsequently published in 1944 as Country Planning: A Study of Rural Problems (Oxford AERI, 1944). Though long out of print, it remains the classic study unhindered by excessive romanticism, of English rural communities in the middle of the twentieth century. Together with a well-produced film made for the Central Office of Information in 1946, these two records provide an obvious starting point for this chapter.
