Hundon Village: Recent Times
Following the war the many changes in an increasingly mobile and more affluent society are reflected in the story of Hundon.
In 1970 the airfield was closed which resulted in some RAF families leaving the parish but this coincided with the commencement of the building of new houses mostly at Farmerie Road , Galley Road and Windmill Rise. The population which had been 663 in 1971 rose to 1,421 in 1981. The attractions of village life, changing job patterns, retirement and other reasons drew people here. In 1881 the population was 885 including children and they lived in 259 dwellings with a further 33 houses being uninhabited. In 1981 the 1,421 inhabitants lived in 442 houses.
In 1976 the Home Office had Highpoint Prison built on part of the old airfield land. The unoccupied quarters and buildings left by the R.A.F. had been used to temporarily house Ugandan Asian refugees and they had moved on to more permanent homes. Those houses were then used to provide quarters for some of the Prison Officers and the R.A.F. Officers’ Mess was retained and taken into use. Some of the Prison Officers chose to live in Hundon and have remained here after retirement. More than 700 male and female prisoners are housed separately in the prison watched over by 160 uniform officers of all grades plus a further 140 catering and administrative staff.
A very recent event was the closure of the Chapel in North Street in 1999. The first indication that attendance was falling was in 1964 when it was decided to erect a false ceiling between the galleries and the floor. This also helped to make the building warmer. The Chapel and AH Saints
Church divided the profit of £216 received when the Village Reading Room was sold in 1963 and this probably helped with the cost. Attendance continued to fall and a service of thanksgiving was held on the 25th July prior to the Chapel’s closure. Members now meet elsewhere but meet once a month in the village as a ‘house group’ of their new congregation.
** The completion of the village hall in 1957, built with the aid of Swedish Quaker students, has led to an increasing number of activities and pursuits being followed there and when the one remaining shop in the village closed in 1997 this was much lamented, particularly by the older people. However a Community Shop and Post Office has been built onto the Village Hall and was opened in recent weeks. It functions well with the aid of village volunteer shop assistants and a Post Master who is a retired Prison Governor.
HUNDON NOW
Hundon Now
Hundon now retains its Anglo Saxon type of habitation with smaller groupings of houses at Brockley Green, Babel Green, Mount Pleasant and Steeplechase with a larger number near the church in North Street . The varied range of houses from the old (there are now 28 houses and the church dating from the 14thC listed as being of architectural or historical value) to the very new are occupied by a very diverse community of people with a great range of occupations, talents and interests.
Therein lies the greatest change that has occurred in the parish. From being self-contained with most people working within, it is now very outward looking with most people working away from it. Changes are yet taking place as more and more are working from home through the benefits of modern technology. It may be common place to make these remarks but they are true of this and many other villages at this time.
We live in comparatively peaceful times and no new names have appeared on the war memorial for a long while. Hundon is a very pleasant place in which to live and long may it remain so.
Therein lies the greatest change that has occurred in the parish. From being self-contained with most people working within, it is now very outward looking with most people working away from it. Changes are yet taking place as more and more are working from home through the benefits of modern technology. It may be common place to make these remarks but they are true of this and many other villages at this time.
We live in comparatively peaceful times and no new names have appeared on the war memorial for a long while. Hundon is a very pleasant place in which to live and long may it remain so.
This extract from the Hundon Millennium book is in memory of the author the late Mr Leonard Caton.
This article is reprinted with the kind permission of Mrs Irene Caton.
** “The village hall may well have been completed in 1957, but it was in 1956 that a group of young volunteers under the auspices of the Friends Work Camps Committee in London (Society of Friends = Quakers) gathered in Hundon to advance the work. Of these, only a handful were Quakers and, although several were students, many of the participants were already young graduates, and among the eight nations represented, only three girls came from Sweden.
How do I know this? Because I was the on-site leader of the work camp.”
This note was added by Anthony Bristow who now lives in Sweden because he married one of the Swedish girls. Added February 2013