14 JUNE 1946, Page 24

Dwindled Villages In many counties villages have been dwindling for

years. The popula- tion of Hertfordshire, for example, has been falling for at least a century. A village very familiar to me in Huntingdonshire, which is only sixty miles from London, has fallen within my own memory from over 8oc inhabitants to the neighbourhood of 200. The theoretic planners, turn- ing their backs on such districts, seem to prefer the proximity of London ; and run the risk, not of establishing a new factory town, but of pro- viding houses' for " daily ',readers," whose days are spent in London offices.