ABSTRACT
The Marches and Englishness Village Pride
Shropshire has seemingly always had a distinct county identity. Defined in part by its proximity to Wales and the industrial Midlands, it appears stronger than other areas of rural England. Before the Great War, for those who worked on the land the sense of place, within this ancient Salopian loyalty, was more closely defined by the parish, or at most by the agricultural 'pays' adjacent to a market town. Many country areas shared this sense of locality, which could be supplemented by a vague loyalty to England. As one of George Ewart Evans' east Suffolk informants illustrated:
Pre-war local loyalties were often defined by opposition to neighbouring parishes. There is very little literature on inter-village rivalry, although some mention is made of this in the works of George Ewart Evans: "The people who lived in the next parish were strangers, even "foreigners"... any intimacy was frowned upon: to be married to one of them was almost a crime.' As with many cultural changes, this lessened after 1918, but nevertheless continued well into the twentieth century. Fred Wigby of Wicklewood, Norfolk was beaten up as a 'foreigner' when he attempted to court a Wymondham girl in 1927.'
