SHIFTERS IN KERSTON
It was thought for some time that the trend in England after the Second World War whereby significant numbers of people migrated from towns into the countryside was a temporary phenomenon relating to urban business cycles (Champion, 1989). Consequently, it was assumed that the resurgence of the urban economy in the 1980s and 1990s would coincide with a decline in urban–rural migration (Champion et al., 1998; Champion and Atkins, 2000).
In fact, demographic statistics indicate a sustained flow of urban migrants to rural areas during this period. According to census figures, between 1991 and 2001, the population of rural England grew at a rate almost eight times faster than that of urban areas (DEFRA, 2002, quoted by Buller, Morris and Wright, 2003). And, interestingly for the present research, the highest percentage growth in rural districts between the 1991 and 2001 censuses was recorded in the East Midlands (ibid.).
The dominant explanatory concept for this demographic trend is ‘coun- terurbanisation’ (Champion 1989, 1992; Fielding, 1982) – a process of popu- lation ‘deconcentration’ and ‘decentralisation’ (Champion, 1989) regulated by planning policy and ‘fuelled’ by middle class lifestyle choices (Champion and Fielding, 1992). Although it is difficult to unravel social class patterns within this trend, with in-migration and out-migration happening at the same time within the overall population growth, Buller, Morris and Wright (2003)
conclude that a socio-economic recomposition has come about – one that can be characterised in terms of embourgeoisement. Increasingly, over the recent period, as Champion and Fielding (1992, p. 2) put it, ‘it has been those in secure “middle class” professional and managerial jobs, together with those who have a strong expectation of entering such jobs . . . who have come to represent typical inter-regional migrants’. There has been, they continue, ‘a sudden up-grading of rural property as villages have been “invaded” by middle-class gentrifiers’.
This interest in ‘upgrading’ rural properties clearly presents an economic opportunity [for parties who might want to exploit its economic potential].
Moore (2004) describes the conversion of redundant agricultural buildings into residential property as being the ‘bread and butter’ diversification oppor- tunity for the UK farming community as the agricultural economy has faltered.
Such diversification of the farm sector whereby farmers have moved from being ‘monoactive’ to ‘multiple’ business owners has been well reported in the small business literature (Carter, 1998, 1999, 2001). But we might also expect such opportunities to be taken up by non-agricultural entrepreneurs, especially in the light of the fact that rural areas have been noted as having higher than average levels of self-employment than urban areas, with urban–rural migrants playing a key role in this area (Keeble and Gould, 1985; Keeble et al., 1992; Keeble, 1993, 1996; Green, 1999; Findlay, Short and Stockdale, 1999; Westhead and Wright, 1999).
As reported in other studies of rural change in the UK (Fuller, 1990; Evans and Ilbery, 1992), in the Kerston district these processes of social change occurred in three stages.
Stage 1
This started in the 1970s, during which time the large land owning estates moved to consolidate the small farming units into larger agricultural enter- prises. The smaller farms run by tenant farmers were proving to be no longer economically viable. Most of the tenant farmers were given the opportunity to buy their houses and some land.
Stage 2
The second stage, in the 1980s, saw most of these tenant farmers selling off their properties, typically after only a short period of owning them.
Nevertheless some tenant farmers continued to farm the land, coping with economic difficulties by diversifying into other activities. Many of these rural properties – mainly farmhouses – were bought by urban–rural shifters directly from the tenant farmers who had previously lived in them.
An illustration of what occurred at the second stage of social change in the Kerston rural community was given by Maria and Dennis Young who moved to Kerston after living all their previous lives in cities. They moved in 1989 from a semi-detached house in a town on the edge of Nottingham. At that time, Maria wasn’t involved in the professional work in which she is now engaged.
But as her income began to improve, with promotions at work, she and Dennis decided to move to the country. In moving 20 miles out of the city, they found that they could afford to buy a much larger property. House prices within closer commuting distance were very high as a result of people who had been ahead of them in the urban–rural shift. Maria and Dennis bought a very run- down farmhouse from a couple who had bought it, not long before, from the original tenant farmers. The tenant farmers from whom they had bought the place had put it on the market soon after having bought it themselves from the big estate at a ‘knock-down’ price. They farmed it for a while but could not really make it pay and so decided to ‘cash in’ and sell the property on. Maria and Dennis told the researchers that they believed that they had moved ‘just at the right time’, before developers like Eddie Newhall moved in. They could not have afforded the move to the country with the prices that these houses were to later command.
Stage 3
The third stage, in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, sees the appearance of the entrepreneur-developer. This new figure on the rural scene recognised the market potential for renovating and converting barns into domestic dwellings which had been left to decay through this process.
Eddie Newhall, an entrepreneurial property developer, is part of the third stage of the social change process we are looking at. As we shall see later, he confirms that he was a new type of actor on the Kerston property scene. And, as we shall further see, Eddie and his wife were also in-migrants to Kerston from the city. However, before we look closely at his account of his urban–rural shift and his entrepreneurial activities, we need to establish the style of conceptual analysis that we intend to bring to bear on Eddie, the entre- preneur, and some of his clients – in order to bring out the intertwining ways in which both parties in this entrepreneurial process have ‘become other’ as part of their involvement in social change processes in the Kerston district. We do this in two stages: first, setting out an ‘orientations and meanings’ perspec- tive for looking at social change processes and, second, applying this perspec- tive more specifically to entrepreneur–client relationality within the social change processes.