ABSTRACT
The examination of the character of the various housing profiles has underlined the great diversity of housing environments which exist in the English countryside. The recognition at the outset of the roles of rural housing as wealth and status over and above the more prosaic role as shelter forces an immediate distinction to be made between owners and tenants. Housing policy, it has been argued, is only one strand in the complex web of state intervention which surrounds housing in the countryside. This chapter deals with an examination of the three roles of rural housing – as house, as wealth and as status – and the ensuing discussion has emphasised the results of the different objectives which flow from each of these roles. One possible future, particularly if energy problems continue well into the twenty-first century, is of a repopulated countryside where both society and economy have taken on an essentially local orientation.
