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www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
Differential productions of rural gentrification: illustrationsfrom North and South Norfolk
Martin Phillips
Department of Geography, University Of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
Received 16 October 2002; received in revised form 10 August 2004
Abstract
This paper focuses attention on the making of space for rural gentrification, both discursively and materially. The paper empha-
sises the differential constructions of gentrification within urban and rural studies. Connections are drawn between production-side
theories of gentrification, notions of the �post-productivist countryside� and studies that have related rural demographic change and
gentrification with planning and property relations. Drawing on these three sets of ideas, the paper explores gentrification in rural
Norfolk. It is argued that the contemporary geography of rural gentrification may in part reflect historic structures of landownership
as well as settlement classifications associated with the land-use planning system. Country and District level analysis is followed up
by detailed study of gentrification of two villages in Norfolk, which highlights how gentrified rural spaces may be produced in rather
different way and through different agencies, and as a result takes different forms.
� 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gentrification; Rurality; Social construction of space; Property; Norfolk
1. Making space for rural gentrification: an introduction
The term gentrification is often interpreted as a lar-
gely urban phenomena, with urban gentrification beinga widely acknowledged research subject—even research
frontier (van Weesep, 1994)—and having become a het-
erogeneous and contested discursive space, with highly
divergent interpretations of gentrification being ad-
vanced and debated. In contrast, rural gentrification ap-
pears as a small, restricted and rather unremarkable
discursive space. A relatively small number of people
use the term rural gentrification, and when it is used isoften accompanied with little or no justifying commen-
tary: rural gentrification is either largely ignored or pre-
sented as a commonplace referent to some changes in
contemporary rural life. The title of this paper in one
sense points to the differential production of these two
0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2004.08.001
E-mail address: [email protected]
discursive spaces, and to a continuing endeavour (see
for example, Phillips, 1993, 2001b, 2002b, 2004) to
transform the discursive space of rural gentrification
into something more akin to that of the urban, wherebygentrification is seen as an important but congested and
contested term. As noted in Phillips (2001b), this trans-
formation does not imply that rural researchers neces-
sarily have to import all the ideas and practices of
urban studies into the rural discursive space as there
may well be significant differences between processes
and senses of gentrification in rural and urban areas, dif-
ferences which need to be reflected in the interpretationsof gentrification adopted (see also Smith and Phillips,
2001). However, there may also be significant common-
alities of process and complex interconnections in
senses of urban and rural gentrification which are wor-
thy of exploration, and which if anything appear to
increase, not lessen, the complications of interpreting
gentrification.
478 M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
However, the title of this paper also has another
meaning, in that the attention will focus on material
rural spaces—the spaces of rural landscapes out there
beyond academic discussion and debate (although not
necessarily completely untouched or untouchable by
those debates)—and how in a variety of ways manyare becoming susceptible to, and made ready for, rural
gentrification. In making this argument the paper will
draw upon the notion that gentrification involves the
refurbishment of residential properties and an accompa-
nying change in social composition, ideas which can be
seen to circulate in the discursive spaces of both urban
and rural gentrification studies, although they have
arguably been much more explicitly and extensively cir-culated in the former.
The next section of the paper will seek to substantiate
this last claim, outlining some exponents of this view of
gentrification within urban studies and explicit and im-
plicit connections with rural studies. Amongst these con-
nections are some interesting questions surrounding the
relationship of contemporary gentrification acts as the
legacies of past actions and relationships. These issuesare further explored in a second section which considers
the relevance of urban �production-side� theorisations ofgentrification to studies of one particular rural district in
England, North Norfolk. Finally, the paper will focus
on the production of spaces for rural gentrification with-
in two villages in Norfolk.
2. Production theories of urban gentrification and rural
studies: charting some connections
First use of the term gentrification is widely attrib-
uted to Glass (1964) and here there is a clear sense that
gentrification is about both the �refurbishment�, or doingup, of properties in an area and associated changes in its
social composition:
‘‘One by one, many of the working-class quartersof London have been invaded by the middle clas-ses . . . . Shabby modest mews and cottages . . .have been taken over . . . and become elegant,expensive residences. Larger Victorian houses,down graded in an earlier or recent period . . .[to] lodging houses or . . . multiple occupation -have been upgraded again . . . Once this processof �gentrification� starts in a district it goes on rap-idly until all or most of the original working-classoccupiers are displaced and the whole character ofa district is changed’’ (Glass, 1964, p. 33).
Whilst gentrification debates have spawned a whole
host of other ontological conceptions of gentrification
(see Phillips, 2002b, forthcoming-a), this original sense
of gentrification has continued. The so-called �produc-tion-side� theorists, for example, have promoted the
notion that gentrification should be understood as the
productive investment of capital related to the closure
of so-called �rent-gaps� in order to realise profit (see par-
ticularly Smith, 1979a,b, 1982, 1996). These rent gaps
occur where there is a devaluation of properties within
an area which leads to there being a gap between the ac-tual payments—or rents in a very general sense—being
made by users of property and the potential level of
financial returns which might be expected for this area.
This gap means that there is an opportunity for high lev-
els of profit to be made by those people or institutions
that can revalorise these areas by investing capital in
new use of these areas which can reap greater rental val-
ues. Hence, for Smith, gentrification is the result ofcycles of disinvestments and investment of capital.
Although this notion has been widely explored and
debated in the urban context (Clarke, 1988; Clarke and
Gullberg, 1991; Hamnett, 1991; Ley, 1986; Knopp,
1990a), there has been little explicit exploration of the
approach within rural contexts, where the emphasis has
generally been on the movement of people rather than
capital (cf. Smith, 1979b). Cloke and Little (1990, p.164), for instance, talk of gentrification as being ‘‘class-
dictated population movements’’ into accessible rural
areas whereby there is ‘‘an immigration of middle-class
residents at the expense of the lower classes’’, while
Smith and Phillips (2001, p. 457) argue that ‘‘the distinct
consumption practices of in-migrant households are cen-
tral to the processes of gentrification’’ occurring in rural
WestYorkshire. Smith and Phillips indeed propose thatthe notion of rural gentrification might be replaced by
the term �rural greentrification� to ‘‘stress the demand
for, and perception of, �green� residential space from in-
migrant households’’ (p. 457). This concept places clear
emphasis on population movement, which is reiterated
in Smith (2002, p. 386) where stress is placed on ‘‘the
importance of migratory and population dynamics with
processes of gentrification’’. The term greentrificationalso lacks the class associations of gentrification (read
as gentry-fication, making more gentry), and as such
might be seen as a new manifestation of both the ‘‘ano-
dyne terminology’’ (Smith, 1996, p. 32) associated with,
but lacking the critical connotations of, gentrification,
and also the ‘‘aversion to notions of class in rural stud-
ies’’ identified by Murdoch and Marsden (1994, p.
199); (see also Phillips, 2004, p. 26). Indeed, whilst stud-ies such as Cloke and Little (1990), Smith and Phillips
(2001) and Smith (2002) make no reference to the argu-
ment of people such as Smith (1979) that gentrification
should be viewed as revolving around the movement of
capital rather than, simply, the movement of people, they
all do clearly recognise class dimensions to rural change.
Many other studies whilst addressing the same issues as
these studies have largely eschewed notions of gentrifica-tion and class, preferring instead to couch their studies in
terms of a range of other concepts, such as counter-
M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494 479
urbanisation, rural migration, rural re- and de-popula-
tion, rural demographic change, rural development, rur-
al regeneration, and rural restructuring (e.g. Day et al.,
1989; Marsden et al., 1993; Murdoch and Marsden,
1994; Lewis, 1998; Abram, 1998; Stockdale et al., 2000;
Beyers and Nelson, 2000; Nelson, 2001). Many of thesestudies enact what I have elsewhere (Phillips, 1998a,d)
identified as a �restricted social imagination� focused on
tangible, easily enumerated, mappable, and relatively
uncontested phenomena, while others adopt more criti-
cal, political-economic orientated approaches, often
employing notions of capital movement and investment
although making little or no direct reference to conceptu-
alisations of gentrification, and in some cases being quitesceptical about the theoretical value of notions of class
(see Phillips, 1998a).
Despite its taciturn usage in rural studies, as noted
elsewhere (Phillips, 1993, 2002a,b, 2004), a series of
parallels can be discerned between urban gentrification
and rural research, even when restricting attention to
production side theorisations of gentrification. First,
studies such as Little (1987) and Phillips (1993) high-light the rapid gains which can made from buying
and selling houses in the countryside, and also the exis-
tence of a significant number of rural residents under-
taking substantial building work on their property to
heighten its exchange value. Second, there has been a
continuing series of studies examining rural housing
development (e.g. Shucksmith, 1990; Murdoch and
Marsden, 1991, 1994; Murdoch and Marsden, 1994),and while there has been a tendency to focus primarily
on new house construction as opposed to the refurbish-
ment of existing housing stock (see Phillips, 2002), even
these studies may be seen to lie with the orbit of pro-
duction side theorisations of gentrification given the
inclusion, at least within some conceptions, of large-
scale urban redevelopment schemes involving ground
clearance and large-scale newbuild (see Smith, 1996;A. Smith, 1989; Fainstein, 1994; cf. Warde, 1991; Ham-
nett, 1992). Third, and closely related to the above
point, state promotion of urban gentrification may be
seen to also have some rural analogues in the recent,
but largely unexamined, promotion of country/market
town redevelopment (DETR, 2000; Countryside
Agency, 2001). Fourth, there have been some studies
which have drawn upon Rose�s (1989) notion of �mar-ginal gentrification�, with Phillips (1993), for instance,
identifying that some residential refurbishment and
rebuildings in rural Gower were being undertaken by
people on moderate incomes seeking to gain access to
highly competitive housing markets (see also Cloke
et al., 1995, 1998), while Sherwood and Chaney
(2000) looked at the gains that accrued on the re-sale
of homes bought by former council-house tenants, sug-gesting that this may be seen as a form of gentrifi-
cation.
A fifth area where some connections might be drawn
between production side theorisation of gentrification
and the rural studies is with respect to notions of the
�post-productivist� countryside. As Wilson (2001) notes,
although the term post-productivism has come to be
interpreted in a range of different ways (see also Evanset al., 2002), some of its earliest advocates placed partic-
ular emphasis on the de-valorisation of land and building
with respect to agricultural capital and its revalorisation
with respect to other capital networks (e.g. Kneale et al.,
1992; Murdoch and Marsden, 1994). Post-productivism
hence relates, at least in these accounts, to the de-valori-
sation of land and building with respect to agricultural
production and its uneven revalorisation with respectto other, more consumption orientated, capital net-
works. Rural gentrification likewise may be seen as one
form of the revalorisation of resources and spaces which
have become seen as unproductive or marginal to agrar-
ian capital, and indeed a variety of other rural capitals.
The �barn conversion� provides perhaps the clearest
example of the such processes of re-valorisation, but
the re-valuation of rural spaces and resources is not justrestricted to barns but may include a whole range of
other agricultural properties, including the houses of
farmers and farm workers, as well as a range of other
rural buildings, such as schools, railway stations and
churches. Furthermore, just as in the context of urban
studies gentrification has been seen to involve not simply
the flow of capital into residential development but also
into retail and leisure facilities (see Phillips, 1993), so inthe rural context one can see the revalorisation of spaces
formerly used by agrarian and other rural capitals for
leisure and retaining activities.
Whilst the term post-productivism may not necessar-
ily be interpreted temporally (see Phillips, 2004) it often
has been and in doing so points to a further set of par-
allels between theorisations of gentrification and rural
studies. Smith (2002, p. 388) argues for the develop-ment of �sensitive temporal analysis of gentrification�,and temporal analysis has often figured prominently
in both �production-side� and other theorisations of
gentrification. It has, for instance, already been
mentioned that Smith (1979b, 1982, 1989) argues that
gentrification needs to be understood as cycles of
investment and deinvestment which occur over time.
Zukin (1990, p. 49) also emphases historical sequencesof capital investment, claiming that gentrification can
be considered ‘‘schematically as a large circuit of cul-
tural capital that is in turn made up of smaller, special-
ized circuits, each of which joins labour, finance and
capital investment on physical infrastructure’’. Zukin
identifies a range of gentrification practices associated
with different phases in the circuit of capital, and in-
deed different agents of gentrification (see Table 1).At this last point, Zukin�s analysis may complement,
if not be entirely commensurable with (see Phillips,
Table
1
Urbangentrificationasaconsumptionspace
forcapitalcirculation
Types
ofcapitalandassociatedpractices
ofgentrification
Phase
inthecircuitofcapital
Typeofagency
gentrification
Labour/products
Physicalinfrastructure
Finance
Architecturalrestorations
Conversionofold
townhousesandlofts
Investm
entin
�avantgarde�
art,restaurants
Directcapitalinvestm
ent
Individualised
Productionofgentrificationproducts—
i.e.
replicas,Victoriana,chintz
Creationofensemble
offacilities
tocreate
adowntown�scene�
Creationoflocalreal
estate
market
Intensificationofcapital
Individualisedbutmore
empowered
Publicationofmagazines
Creationof�landmark�districts—
i.e.
legally
recognised
area
Agencies
adoptareaas
atourist
andretaildestination;
fictiouscapital(credit)encourages
further
expansion
Symbolisationofcapital
Nationalandmulti-national
firm
s
Circulationofideasandpersonnel
Expansionofcentralbusinessdistrict
Investm
entin
new
office
construction
Diffusionand
corporatisationofcapital
Largecorporate
capital
Source:
BasedonZukin,S.(1990)�Socio-spatialprototypes
ofanew
organisationofconsumption:therole
ofrealculturalcapital�,
Sociology:37–56.
480 M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
2004), so-called �consumption� or �production of gentri-
fers� approaches which from the late 1970s often identi-
fied temporal sequences of types of gentrifiers and
associated �stage models� of gentrification (e.g. Clay,
1979; Holcomb and Beauregard, 1981; Pattison, 1983;
Kerstein, 1990; Ley, 1996). The precise status of thesemodels has been contested, with Beauregard (1986, p.
37), for instance, claiming that this approach create
representations which ‘‘lack any sense of historical
and spatial contingency’’, a viewpoint which has clear
resonances with some recent criticisms of high profile
concepts in rural studies such as �post-productivism�and �rural restructuring�. Evans et al. (2002, p. 325),
for instance, argue that post-productivism is an overly‘‘abstract and over arching’’ concept for theorizing
‘‘the complexity of empirical change’’, while Hoggart
and Paniagua (2001) argue that the notion of rural
restructuring often lacks conceptual substance, fre-
quently being used simply as a different way of saying
social change, and that when it is used more precisely
to refer to ‘‘major qualitative . . . changes in social
structures and practices . . . that are both inter-relatedand multi-dimensional’’ (p. 42), studies often exhibit
‘‘a lack of historical vision’’ (p. 55), too readily reading
contemporary changes as signally some radical break
from the past. Here there are clear echoes too of
Thrift�s (1989) earlier, more general critique of the �per-ils of �transition models�, which included the over-
emphasis on the strength of transitions through neglect
of the presence of earlier parallels with contemporarychanges.
It is certainly clear that the devaluation of rural space
is not simply a feature of the �post-productivist era� butthat there have also been earlier phases of devaluation of
agricultural land, such as in the agricultural depression
of the 1870s and early twentieth century which saw
declining investment of capital in agricultural produc-
tion and land being taken out of production as a re-sponse to falling commodity prices (see Newby, 1987).
There was also in this period a significant change in
the structure of landownership with many large rural es-
tates being broken up and much of this land being pur-
chased by agricultural owner occupiers. Newby, for
example, argues that:
‘‘Between 1918 and 1922, one quarter of the landsurface of Great Britain changed hands—a saleof land unprecedented since the dissolution ofthe monasteries in the sixteenth century . . . ..Many great estates were . . . . broken up and some-thing of a decisive shift in the class structure ofrural society thus occurred. Since the land was soldprimarily to sitting tenants there thus emerged anew breed of owner-occupier commercial farmerswhose significance was to increase as the twentiethcentury progressed’’ (Newby, 1987, p. 153).
M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494 481
The causes of this transformation, and some of its
immediate impacts have been the subject of long debate
(see Goodman and Redclift, 1991; Newby, 1987), and
while this debate may appear to be far removed from
the study of contemporary rural gentrification, a link
may be forged through Spencer�s (1997, p. 78), claimthat the socio-demographic makeup of much of the Brit-
ish countryside is formed by ‘‘events in the present’’
which are ‘‘rooted in structures created in the past’’.
Spencer develops his claims in the context of the study
of rural depopulation (see also Spencer, 1995), but it
can be suggested that his arguments may have equal rel-
evance to the study of rural gentrification. In particular,
it may well be that contemporary actions to gentrify rur-al spaces are very much set in contexts which are legacies
of past actions and relations. In other word, spaces are
made ready for contemporary gentrification in part
through practices of the past.
This issue will form the principal focus of the rest of
this paper, which will examine the production of spaces
of gentrification within rural Norfolk. The following
section will elaborate further on the connections be-tween Spencer�s arguments, production-side theorisa-
tions of gentrification and rural studies, the latter
being drawn primarily from those who have studied gen-
trification and/or rural Norfolk. Many of these studies
relate specifically to one local authority district, namely
North Norfolk, and reference will also be to contempo-
rary planning documents and analysis of Census infor-
mation relating to this district. The subsequent sectionin the paper will then focus of the production of spaces
of gentrification in two Norfolk villages, one in the dis-
trict of North Norfolk and one in the neighbouring dis-
trict of South Norfolk.
3. Rural population change and spaces of gentrification
3.1. Initial reflections
For production-side theorists of gentrification the
movement of people is not accorded as central signifi-
cance as the movement of capital, although it can be
seen as both an important constituent and consequence
of the latter�s movement. As such even with this capito-
centric approach, population movement may be auseful indicator of gentrification processes, both
contemporary and historical. It is at this point that
clear connections can be forged with the work of Spen-
cer on rural depopulation and some early studies of
rural gentrification.
Spencer (1997, p. 78) argues that contemporary pat-
terns of rural depopulation may be causally associated
with the historical presence of �closed parishes� whichare defined as those which ‘‘have along history of dom-
ination by a principal estate proprietor or a small num-
ber of landed agriculturalists’’. These areas have often
been contrasted with �open parishes� in which there is
a much more diverse structure of ownership, although
the precise delimitation of each has been varied and de-
bated (see Mills, 1980; Bowler and Lewis, 1987; Banks,
1988; Short, 1992). Spencer argues that up until the for-mation of the post-war planning system, major land-
owners in closed parishes often acted to prevent or
minimise residential growth, whilst in open parishes
there was more scope for population expansion. After
the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, landowners
continued to exercise influence over rural demographics
through, in some cases, a retention of a hegemonic polit-
ical, social and economical position (or as Newby et al.,1978) phrased it, through �property, paternalism and
power�), but also because the planning system took the
existing distributions of population and development
as given. As Spencer (1997, p. 79) comments, ‘‘local
authorities tended to formalise the status quo rather
than try to refashion it’’, with small settlements in closed
parishes being designated as non-growth areas, while
settlements in open parishes which had already experi-enced growth being designated as areas where residential
development was to be allowed or even encouraged, in
so-called �growth-centres� or �key settlements�.Spencer develops his arguments primarily in relation
to demographic change and levels of housebuilding in
the countryside (see also Spencer, 1995), although he
does make some reference to ‘‘the conversion of redun-
dant agricultural structures into residential use’’ by‘‘middle-class groups belonging to the service class’’
seeking ‘‘to create their rural idyll’’ (Spencer, 1995,
p. 165), and also points to the colonisation of certain
parishes by ‘‘middle-aged gentrifiers’’ (Spencer, 1997,
p. 89). Gentrification can, however, occur without any
change in population numbers, or indeed changes in
numbers of dwellings, but even in such cases, Spencer�sarguments about the significance of land-ownershipand planning policy may have relevance. Indeed, one
of the earliest studies to use the term �rural gentrifica-tion� developed very similar arguments with respect to
the rural planning system, suggesting that development
control policies in South Nottinghamshire and North
Norfolk may have been ‘‘influenced the geographical
impact of gentrification in rural areas’’ (Parsons, 1980,
p. 17). In particular he suggests that gentrification, lar-gely conceptualised in terms of an expanding middle
class presence, was greatest in ‘‘non-selected villages’’
and least in ‘‘selected villages’’, or ‘‘growth centres’’, a
feature which he attributes to the lack of low to medium
cost local authority house construction in non-growth
areas. Cloke (1983, p. 110) suggests a very similar geog-
raphy of gentrification, claiming that in ‘‘pressurised
rural areas . . . restrictive policies in small areas attractthe gentrification process and prevent the building of
dwellings for local need’’.
482 M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
3.2. Applications within North Norfolk
According to Cloke (1983, p. 62), the planners of Nor-
folk were �trendsetters� in the development of selective
growth and key settlement policies, with County Council
officials undertaking a series of studies on service provi-sion and settlement size in the 1960s and early 1970s
(Ayton, 1976; Green, 1966; Green and Ayton, 1967; Nor-
folk County Planning Department, 1975; Shaw, 1976a,b,
1978; Stockford and Dorrel, 1979). Both Parsons (1980)
and Cloke (1979) Cloke (1983) document that the County
Council� s (Norfolk County Council, 1972) Interim Set-
tlement Policy set out a selective growth and key settle-
ment policy, which was incorporated into the 1977Norfolk Structure Plan (Norfolk County Council, 1977)
and also, albeit with some modification into the 1980
Norfolk Structure Plan (Norfolk County Council,
1980). As noted above, for Parsons this policy quite spe-
cifically impacted of the geography of gentrification with-
in at least one of the county�s districts, North Norfolk.
Cloke (1983) notes that the Chief Planning Officer
was amongst those who had written critically on key set-tlement policies (Shaw, 1978). However, the presence of
these polices can still be discerned in contemporary pol-
icy making in the county. The 1998 North Norfolk Dis-
trict Plan, for example, outlines a �development
strategy� which distinguishes between ‘‘areas where
growth is to be directed’’, ‘‘areas where there will be lim-
ited development opportunities’’ and �areas of develop-ment restraint� (North Norfolk District Council, 1998,p. 81). Once more these areas are apparently closely tied
to existing settlement size, with areas of growth being
�towns�, areas of limited development being �small towns
and large villages� and areas of development restraint
being �Selected Small Villages� and the �Countryside�. Itis hence perhaps unsurprising that, as Table 2 shows,
levels of population change in the District between
1971 and 2001 varied with settlement designation, asalso did, interestingly in the light of Spencer�s (1997)
arguments about open and closed parishes, the propor-
tion of households in rented accommodation.
Table 2
Population change, tenure and settlement designations in North Norfolk, 19
Settlement Designation, 1998 Local Plan
Population change
1971–2001
Growth towns 79.26
Small town 55.44
Large villages 36.64
Selected small villages 30.46
Other parishes 7.64
All parishes 25.52
Sources: Figures derived from OPCS 1971 Census Small Area Statistics, Ward
2001 Census, Key statistics, accessed via Caseweb, Manchester Information a
Norfolk District Council (1998) North Norfolk Local Plan, Cromer, North N
Spencer, and also Bowler and Lewis (1987), suggests
that the size of the private rented sector recorded in
twentieth century Censuses is a good preliminary indica-
tor of whether an area had a closed or open land own-
ership structure at the close of the nineteenth, with
closed parishes often having a large private rented sectorwhich stemmed from the provision of housing for estate
workers. The 1971 Census provides the earliest easy
accessible source of such information at the local level,
with the information being published at the local level
within County Reports (OPCS, 1976) and also now
accessible in digital forms through the ERSC Data Ar-
chive. It should be noted that the measure is very much
a surrogate measure of land ownership and that this it-self may have undergone considerable change between
the close of the nineteenth century and the collection
of the 1971 Census.
More direct sources of information on land owner-
ship are available, including the so-called �LloydGeorge�s Domesday� survey of landownership estab-
lished by the �Finance (1909–1910) Act� and itself very
clearly bound up with transformations in landownershipand the power of the landed classes in the early twenti-
eth century. Short (1989, p. 2) claims that this source
‘‘represents by far the largest data bank of information
on such issues as landownership’’. He does, however,
identify a series of problems associated with this source
material, including, critically for this research, some
associated with the establishment of geographical
boundaries of assessment. The survey which sought tomake ‘‘a valuation of all the land in the United King-
dom’’ (10 Edw. VII, Section 26 (1)), was administered
through Income Tax Parishes which were generally,
although not universally, equivalent to one or more civil
parishes. As Short (1989) documents, no list detailing
the relationship between Civil and Taxation parishes
has been preserved. It is possible to establish their rela-
tionship by recourse to so-called Valuation Books estab-lished for each Taxation Parish, although this is, as
Short (1989, p. 30), acknowledges, ‘‘an arduous task’’
at any scale above that of a parish (civil or taxation).
71–2001
Average percentage
Household change
1971–2001
Households in private rented
accommodation, 1971
123.53 19.70
89.69 26.94
67.77 31.13
52.93 32.14
30.45 49.95
49.21 37.10
Library computer file SN1182, UK Data Archive, University of Essex;
nd Associated Service (MIMAS). Settlement designations from North
orfolk District Council.
M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494 483
For the present, therefore, the use of Census derived sur-
rogate measures, despite their potential limitations, has
to suffice when examining these issue of spatial varia-
tions across local authority districts, although reference
will be made later in this paper to the 1910 valuation for
two specific parishes in Norfolk.As well as considering the limitations of these mea-
sures in general, attention also needs to be paid to the
precise values used as indicators of open or closed land-
ownership structures. In their analysis Bowler and Lewis
use a cut-off figure of 80 percent, although Spencer
(1997) suggests that this is too high in the context of
South Oxfordshire where many landowners had dis-
posed of much of their rented housing stock before the1960s, and uses a relativistic measure of over twice the
local average as indicative of closed parishes. If this
measure is used on the data included in Table 2, a cut
off figure of 74.2 percent produces figures which lend
support to Spencer�s claim that past land-holding struc-
tures are drawn into contemporary land development
policies and patterns of population change (see Table
3). Not only are the closed parishes entirely coincidentwith settlements designated as either �Selected Small Vil-
lages� or �Countryside�, but there is also a sharp differ-
ence in population change over the period 1971 and
2001 between open and closed parishes within these
two settlement categories.
Spencer (1995, p. 154) also claims research on rural
population change has been overly focused on ‘‘the
redistribution of people’’ and has paid insufficient atten-tion to change in ‘‘the number of households and dwell-
ings’’. This argument may be seen to also have relevance
within the context of rural North Norfolk where two
quite contrasting images of demographic change can
be discerned. First, the district was widely associated
with rural depopulation in the 1960s and 1970s. Drudy
(1978, p. 2), for instance, argued that North Norfolk
was an area which had seen a rural population declinewhich was similar in extent, ‘‘and in some cases, worse
than’’, that which was to be found in ‘‘areas of tradi-
Table 3
Population change in open and closed parishes in North Norfolk,
1971–2001
Settlement Designation,
1998 Local Plan
% of �closed�parishes
Average population
change 1971–2001
(%)
Closed Open
Growth towns 0.0 – 79.26
Small town 0.0 – 54.77
Large villages 0.0 – 36.64
Selected small villages 0.89 �56.95 31.98
Countryside 5.36 �6.25 7.67
Sources: As Table 2. Note: Closed parish defined as having over twice
the 1971 District average percentage of households living in private
rented accommodation.
tional depopulation’’, such as mid-Wales and the High-
lands and Islands of Scotland, where a ‘‘landscape of
depopulation’’ (Weekley, 1988, p. 127) was frequently
invoked involving unoccupied properties falling into
dereliction. Shaw (1978), on the other hand, argued that
Norfolk witnessed rural population growth and risinghousing demands through the 1960s and 1970s. These
apparently paradoxical interpretations may in part re-
flect the differential growth patterns outlined earlier.
Shaw (1978, p. 78–9), for instance, emphasises popula-
tion growth and notes that this is concentrated in ‘‘those
villages where most new development was felt to be
appropriate’’. Cloke (1983), on the other hand, notes
how Shaw�s analysis also reveals how other villages inthe county experienced population decline over this per-
iod, a point that is also evident in Table 3 in that closed
countryside parishes experienced an overall decline in
population between 1971–2001.
Shaw and Cloke also note that many of these villages
experiencing population decline were subject to quite
substantial house construction. This seeming further
paradox illustrates Spencer�s claim that research needsto consider changing relations between the people,
households and dwellings. In particular his work, and
work by people such as Weekley (1988) and Lewis
(1998), has highlighted how declining population num-
bers does not necessarily involve household abandon-
ment of dwellings. Lewis, for instance, records a
decline in the number of people and households in the
neighbouring district of Breckland between 1961 and1971, but notes that the figure was less than one percent
for household losses. In the case of North Norfolk, the
average level of change in the District�s non-urban par-
ishes in this period was actually an increase of popula-
tion of just under one percent, while the average
number of households actually grew by over 6.5 percent.
However, as Fig. 1 shows, such overall figures can mask
considerable variations between parishes, and the ten-dency of those with low population densities to have
experienced reductions in both population numbers
and households, whilst those with above average popu-
lation densities saw both population and household
numbers increasing, with the latter increasing to a great-
er extent than the former. These figures suggest that
in the smallest settlements imagery of a �landscapeof depopulation� may have had some validity inNorth Norfolk in the 1960s, 1 although in many other
1 Parsons in the thesis from which his 1980 paper was drawn, gives
an example of one settlement where 1 in 3 dwellings were unoccupied
but argues that this was due to locally restrictive letting policy and
that, in general, although North Norfolk was ‘‘experiencing wide-
spread depopulation of its villages’’ (Parsons, 1979, p. 329) this was
not leading to extensive amounts of un-occupied property but rather to
‘‘widespread under-utilisation of housing facilities’’ whereby very small
households, including a large number of single-elderly, were living in
family size dwelling.
Table 4
Average size of the �service class� in North Norfolk parishes of differing
population densities, 1971
Population density quartile
(people per square kilometre)
Average size
of the service class
(% of classed households)
Lowest quartile (<0.31) 23.2
Second quartile (0.31–0.41) 21.6
Third quartile (0.42–0.76) 17.0
Highest quartile (>0.76) 16.7
All parishes 19.6
Source: Figures derived from OPCS 1971 Census Small Area Statistics,
Ward Library computer file SN1182.
Fig. 1. North Norfolk population and household change, 1971–2001.
484 M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
settlements there was continuity or growth in household
occupation, albeit accompanied by decreases in house-
hold size, a decrease which in some cases spelt a declinein population numbers even though the number of
households was static or increasing.
This pattern of change is quite commensurable with
the demographic analysis of people such as Weekley,
Spencer and Lewis and may also be indicative of gentri-
fication. Spencer (1997, p. 75), for instance, has argued
that divergence between household and population
trends may be seen as a product of gentrification in thatnet losses to an area�s population may occur when
‘‘affluent households comprising one or two persons
(often middle aged or elderly)’’ move into a house previ-
ously occupied by a larger family. In other words, there
is depopulation through population turnover, a turn-
over which also involves a change in the social composi-
tion of the area. Given that it has already been shown
that the divergence between trends in population andhousehold numbers was greatest in the least densely
populated areas, it might be expected that the greatest
change in social composition would also occur in these
areas.
Table 4 shows that the class structure of North
Norfolk recorded in the 1971 Census indicates that the
highest concentrations of people in the so-called �ser-vice-class� were to be found within the least populatedparishes. These figures would lend support to Parsons�argument that rural growth settlements will have a rela-
tively small �middle class� because of the construction of
low to medium cost housing in these settlements. It
should, however, be noted that the �service class� as con-structed by the Census may well from ignore significant
differences in work and market situations (see Phillips,
1998c, 1999a). Furthermore, the decline of council houseprovision following the 1980 Housing Act might be seen
to somewhat undermine Parson�s line of arguments
about the significance of social housing in accounting
for the geography of gentrification. Indeed, a number
of studies (e.g. Milbourne, 1998; Beazley et al., 1980)
have suggested that the sale of council housing proper-
ties has been proportionally greatest in smaller rural set-
tlements, while Chaney and Sherwood (2000) have
suggested that these sales, at least in rural Northampt-
onshire, were accompanied by a substantial influx of ser-
vice-class households. This would suggest that not onlymay the decrease in social housing have been greatest in
small rural settlements, but also that this decline may it-
self contribute to the gentrification of these areas
through population turnover.
More generally, the divergent trends in household
numbers and population size within the less densely
populated parts of rural Norfolk suggest that popula-
tion turnover may be of greater significance in explain-ing the geographical variations in gentrification
identified by Parsons. As such rural gentrification may
have greater commensurability with urban gentrification
than Parsons (1980, p. 3) acknowledges, given that sev-
eral urban commentators have argued that population
displacement should be seen as a defining feature of gen-
trification (e.g. Zukin, 1990; Cameron, 1992).
M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494 485
If population turnover is a key, for some even defin-
ing feature, of rural gentrification, then an important
issue is how to account for its propensity to occur in
the least densely populated areas. Again clear parallels
can be drawn between urban and rural studies of gentri-
fication. For instance, as noted earlier, Spencer (1995)makes reference to these areas being particularly attrac-
tive to middle-class in-migrants desiring some rural
idyll, while Parsons (1980) suggests that these areas
may attract in-migration by people concerned about
house price security. Taken together these arguments
point to housing in low density settlements being desired
as a �positional commodity�: ‘‘something which is fixed
in supply and whose consumption is dependent uponone�s position in society’’ (Phillips, 1993, p. 126).
Numerous studies of urban gentrification have drawn,
explicitly or implicitly on the notion of positional con-
sumption (e.g. Jager, 1986; Mills, 1986; Bridge, 2001a;
Bridge, 2001b), with Zukin (1990) and Ley (1996) mak-
ing some reference to particular types of space being de-
sired by gentrifiers (see Phillips, 2004 for a fuller
discussion of this). Zukin (1990, p. 40), for instance, sug-gests that gentrification constitutes a ‘‘prototype’’ of a
new ‘‘organisation of consumption’’ centred on areas
which are ‘‘[g]eographically central, low-rise but densely
constructed’’ and which have a housing stock that has
commercial and industrial heritage. She adds that
although these areas require some conversion to their
physical infrastructure to make them conform to the de-
mands of gentrified modern living they have desirable‘‘cultural signifiers’’, with a series of ensembles of la-
bour, commodities and finance being invested sequen-
tially in the area by a range of different agents of
gentrification (see Table 1).
As I have argued elsewhere (Phillips, 2004), Zukin
starts her analysis of gentrification at the point at which
various forms of capital starts to become invested in an
area. As such it may be seen to neglect two importantissues. First her account may be seen to enact what
Caulfield (1989) describes as a ‘‘black box’’ approach
to culture whereby various signifiers are identified as
attracting further investment, but there is little or no
analysis of why these signifiers have this function and
how they originated. Similar comments might be ap-
plied to the notion of rural space as a positional com-
modity in that the concept may be seen to underplaythe complexity of the rural idyll (see Cloke et al.,
1995, 1998; Phillips, 1998b,c). Caulfield�s (1989, p.
620) claim that the connections between gentrification
and culture have not been ‘‘well-mapped’’ may be seen
to apply to rural as much as urban gentrification,
although analyses such as that of Caulfield (1994),
Ley (1996) and Smith and Phillips (2001) do serve to
highlight some aspects of the symbolic construct ofdesirable spaces for gentrification (see Phillips, 2004
for further discussion).
A second line of criticism also relates to the point of
entry of Zukin�s analysis in that it neglects the argu-
ments of people such as Smith (1982, 1996) who have
suggested that gentrification should be analysed not sim-
ply as a process of capital investment but also involves
prior de-investment and devaluation of an area, pro-cesses which very much relate to circulations of capital
which extend beyond the immediate vicinity undergoing
gentrification. Although this argument has been criti-
cised (e.g. Ley, 1986, 1987, 1996), as noted earlier it is
one which has some interesting parallels with arguments
raised in a rural context relating to the notion of a �post-productivist countryside�. Interestingly a set of studies ofrural depopulation in Norfolk by Drudy (Drudy, 1978,1987; Drudy and Drudy, 1979; Drudy and Wallace,
1971) make similar points about the need to consider
wider movements of capital in understanding change
in housing situations. In particular, he argues that rural
depopulation in North Norfolk should be set in the con-
text of the region�s agricultural economy. He character-
ised the district as an area of prosperous agriculture and
argued that this prosperity had been brought aboutthrough the substitution of capital for labour, and a
resultant fall in the agricultural labour force. He argued
that whilst depopulation is often associated with eco-
nomic marginality, itself a product of agrarian restruc-
turing which means farmers in some regions become
uncompetitive (see Drudy and Drudy, 1979), in North
Norfolk these changes, whilst producing regional eco-
nomic prosperity, also produced rural depopulation byremoving occupational opportunities in rural areas. In
addition he suggested that these changes altered the
housing situation in many villages in that the process
of capital substitution not only devalorised the labour
power of the agricultural workers but also many of the
properties held by agricultural landowners.
One aspect of this change in housing was that with
fewer agricultural workers there were fewer tenants tolive in tied cottages, whilst at the same time many agri-
cultural landowners were seeking sources of finance to
enable the substitution of capital for labour. As a num-
ber of studies have outlined (e.g. Bettley-Smith, 1982;
Bowler and Lewis, 1987), for many landowners this
combination of circumstances was resolved by selling
off their rented accommodation to realise capital to in-
vest in agricultural production and/or in the purchaseof more land, a practice which acted as a further stimu-
lus to out migration as many former tenants could not
afford to purchase properties. Out migration was also
stimulated, so Drudy argued, by a loss of various ser-
vices within the village, with this decline in services being
initially triggered the decline in the agricultural popula-
tion of the village.
Despite the widespread concern over rural depopula-tion at the time, such out migration was not necessarily
accompanied by dwelling abandonment and declining
2 The size of the �service class� for Censuses up until the 2001 was
calculated on the basis of amalgamating the Census figures for Social
Class I (professional occupations) and Social Class II (intermediate
occupations) in the manner outlined by Thrift (1987). For the 2001
Census the occupational classification of Social Class (derived from
and frequently still referred to as the Registrar General�s classification(see Marshall et al., 1988; Phillips, 1991) was replaced by the �National
Statistics Socio-Economic Classification� (or NS-SEC). For this Census
the size of the �service class� was calculated on the basis of the
operational sub-categories of NS-SEC which are seen as being
equivalent to Social Classes I and II as laid out in Office of National
Statistics (2004). Caution needs to be exercised in interpreting the
figures for at least three reasons. First, the figures prior to 2001 are
derived from the Censuses� 10 percent samples, and given the small
population of these settlements, are likely to fluctuate widely on the
basis of quite small variations. Second, changes in the construction of
the Census� Social Class classification, as well as the movement to the
NS-SEC may produce further variation. Finally, the figures shown are
derived from differing spatial frameworks: the 1971 data being parish
level figures, the 1981 data from ward data, and the 2001 figures from
parish level data created from Output Areas.
486 M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
household numbers in that people might move into these
properties. However, the tenurial and associated agricul-
tural changes may have been of significance for contem-
poraneous and subsequent gentrification. First, it
appears likely that many tenants were unable to afford
to purchase properties when estate landowners decidedto convert them from rented properties, with the proper-
ties instead being bought by more affluent more �middle
class� households. Parsons (1980, p. 17), for instance, re-cords that in his study of twelve villages in North Nor-
folk and Nottinghamshire, ‘‘landlords were selling off
properties previously rented to indigenous population’’,
while in Oxfordshire, Spencer (1997, p. 89) argues that
tenurial restructuring in the parish of Stoke Talmagetriggered ‘‘greater turnover within the existing dwelling
stock than the parish had hitherto experienced’’ with
the area becoming ‘‘colonised by middle-aged gentrifi-
ers’’. Spencer concludes that ‘‘landowner disinvest-
ment . . . created a supply of potentially gentrifiable
properties inhabited by relatively powerless social
groups who were easily persuaded (or forced) to move
away’’ (p. 89), a comment which has striking parallelswith Beauregard (1986, p. 47) claim that gentrification
requires not only the creation of gentrifiable housing
but also ‘‘the creation of prior occupants for that hous-
ing who can easily be displaced or replaced’’. Gentrified
population turnover does not necessarily have to involve
depopulation, and Parsons (1979) identifies cases in
North Norfolk where ‘‘occupied housing or former sin-
gle person dwellings’’ came to be occupied by youngfamilies, suggesting that ‘‘very often the size of the fam-
ily was itself a motivation’’ for residential refurbishment
(see also Phillips, 1993).
A second consequence of changes in the region�s agri-culture of significance to gentrification was that a series
of non-residential properties also became available for
purchase and conversion as many agricultural buildings
became unsuited to housing increasingly large-scaleagricultural machinery. An examination of planning
applications within North Norfolk, for instance, reveals
a range of agriculture and agriculture related buildings
being converted to residential use, including barns,
cowsheds, dairies, stables and mills. Furthermore, the
decline in local services associated with rural depopula-
tion also provided other buildings that might be suit-
able for conversion: hence the planning registers of theDistrict records the conversion of buildings such as
post-offices and shops, public houses, tea-rooms and
hotels, launderies, schools, chapels, workshops and
warehouses. Fourth, whilst disinvesting themselves from
residential and agrarian properties, many landowners
were simultaneously expanding their agricultural land-
holdings, a practice which could significantly restrict
land for new-build development (see Spencer, 1997;Phillips, 2001b) and which in turn could lead to increas-
ing house prices for existing properties.
The degree to which areas underwent such change is
clearly conditioned by a range of factors, including the
precise accumulation strategies of adopted by particular
landowners (see Spencer, 1995, 1997). Furthermore, as
mentioned previously, the timing of change could also
vary considerably, with many of the changes identifiedabove with the period of rural depopulation in the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century occurring earlier in
some localities, and later in others. Such variations
may be significant in determining both the extent and
form of gentrification, issues that will be explored in
the final section of the paper.
4. Making space for rural gentrification: differential
impressions from two Norfolk villages
So far it has been argued that gentrification in rural
Norfolk may be focused in small-scale settlements which
have been relatively immunised from population growth
by past land-holding structures and local authority
development control policies. It has further been arguedthat the geography of rural gentrification may be condi-
tioned by agricultural and tenurial restructurings which
have led to the devalorisation of a range of rural prop-
erties. In the final section of the paper these arguments
are examined through intensive study of two gentrified
villages: Thornage in North Norfolk and Shotesham in
South Norfolk. Both these villages have seen a rise in
the proportion of households which have classifiablevia the Census as �service class�: in 1971 some 20 percent
of Shotesham�s and 25 percent of Thornage�s classed
households fell into the �service class� category, in 1981
the respective percentages were just over 42 and 29 per-
cent, while in 2001 they were 53.6 percent and 41.4
percent. 2
M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494 487
These two villages also exhibited many of the features
identified in the preceding analysis of gentrification in
North Norfolk. Both villages are relatively small, both
parishes in which they are situated having a population
density of around 0.4 persons per kilometre in 2001
(OPCS, 2001). Both villages might also be characterisedhistorically as �closed� parishes, although neither was
classified such on the basis of the amount of rented
accommodation recorded in the 1971 Census, which
formed about 51 percent of the properties in Thornage
and 27 percent in Shotesham. However, an examination
of the Valuation Books of the Inland Revenue�s �New
Domesday Survey� of 1910 indicated that in the parish
of Thornage, a Lord Hastings owned some 25 percentof the property in terms of value, while in Shotesham
the dominance by a single landowner was even greater
with over 92 percent of the property in the parish being
owned by a Lord Fellowes, a dominance which was even
higher if the calculations were done in terms of area
owned as opposed to assessed value of property. The
Fellowes family also appeared to have exerted paternal-
istic influence and control in the village: Robert Fello-wes had a new country house built in the village in
1784 and subsequently established a cottage hospital, a
bath house and a �house of industry� in the village, to-
gether with founding the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital
in the city of Norwich (Gunn, 1976). Robert Fellowes�brother was Rector at Shotesham and there clearly
was considerable potential for the Fellowes family to ex-
ert some influence on both the bodies and minds of theresidents of Shotesham.
Spencer (1997, p. 87) argues that in closed paternalis-
tic settlements there was often little attempt to invest in
residential development or in developments which might
diversify local employment opportunities, which led to
people leaving these village in search of employment
or housing. As Fig. 2 shows, the population of Shote-
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
Popu
latio
n/ho
useh
olds
1891
1901
1911
1921
1931
1941
Year
Fig. 2. Population and household change, S
sham declined by over 150 people during the period
1891 to 1921, but sometime after the latter date in-
creased again, such that by 1951 the population was
approximately the same level as it has been at the start
of the century. The trends in population numbers are
broadly mirrored by changes in household numbers,suggesting that the population change does not stem
from change in household structures. The population
turn around of Shotesham does, however, coincide with
a significant transformation in the structure of property
ownership in that in 1919, after the death of Robert Fel-
lows in 1915, a large part of estate property was sold off.
A further sale of property occurred in 1931 and by the
early 1980s the holdings of the Fellowes family had beenreduced to some 2,000 acres, three-quarters of which
was let to others (Webb, 1984). In 1981 some 48 percent
of the residential properties were owner occupied, with
21 percent being rented from the local authority and
some 30 percent held in other ways such as renting from
private landlords (OPCS, 1981). By 1991 the figures
were 73 percent in owner-occupation, 11 percent rented
from the local authority and 15 percent held in otherways, while by 2001 they were 81 percent, 5 percent
and 14 percent respectively (OPCS, 1991; OPCS,
2001). Hence one can clearly see a shift from a closed
structure of property ownership towards a more open
one, as well as the expansion and then decline in local
authority housing provision.
The break-up of the closed property structure coin-
cides with the onset of an expansion in the populationof village and may therefore be seen to lend weight to
the arguments of people such as Spencer who claim that
rural demographics have been significantly influenced by
the structures of property ownership. In particular
Spencer argues that closed property systems in rural set-
tlements tend to entail stagnant or declining population
number, whilst open distributions tend to be associated
1951
1961
1971
1981
1991
2001
Thornage Households
Shotesham Households
Thornage Population
Shotesham Population
hotesham and Thornage, 1891–2001.
3 The interviews were conducted as part of an ESRC Research
Fellowship on �The processes of rural gentrification� (Ref:
H53627500695) which examined rural gentrification in Berkshire,
Leicestershire and Norfolk. See Phillips, 1999b, 2002a,b for more
details.
488 M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
with population increases. However, whilst Shotesham
might appear to fit in well with this model for the period
from 1891 to 1951, thereafter the changes in this village
seem to contradict it in that there appears to be both a
continuing movement towards a more open structure
of property ownership and yet populations level andhousehold numbers first decreased and then, from
1971 onwards, increased again, albeit less strongly in
terms of population numbers. However rather than sug-
gest that property structure plays no role in determining
the demographics of the village, it can be suggested that
the impact of both the �closed� property system of the
early twentieth century and the break-up of this system
over the course of the rest of the twentieth century wasto construct Shotesham as a space suitable for rural gen-
trification to occur in the period from 1970s onwards.
As discussed earlier, one of the ways that villages
might be made ready for gentrification was through
the past structures of property ownership exerting a
continuing influence through the contemporary plan-
ning system with the characteristics of rural space struc-
tured by patterns of landownership. Small villages whichpowerful landowners had long prevented from growing
now became protected by planning systems committed
to preserving the status quo in terms of the pattern of
land-use and settlement. Shotesham has been designated
a Conservation Area since 1973 and the current District
Local Plan establishes a �development boundary� whichhas,
‘‘been drawn up around the existing built-up areato prevent further ribbon developments extendinginto the countryside, much of which is shown asbeing within an Area of High Landscape Quality’’(South Norfolk District Council, 1997, p. 371).
Great stress is placed in the plan on the scale and
physical layout of the village and the aesthetics of this
layout. It is suggested, for instance, that much of the
‘‘character of the village’’ is derived from its ‘‘one plotdepth development’’ (in other words it is a linear vil-
lage), ‘‘the abundance of trees and hedges which fre-
quently fill the significant gaps that separate many of
the villages’’, and the presence of an area of common
land facing much of the linear development of the vil-
lage. The local plan policy is very much to maintain
these features, which although sometimes characterised
in the planning documents as part of a �natural� timelesslandscape, can be seen to stem quite directly from the
closure of property relations in the village. The area of
common land, for example, was a small vestige of a
much larger area of commons enclosed by Robert Fello-
wes in an Enclosure Act of 1781 (Gunn, 1976), while the
scale and density of development was also a reflection of
proprietal dominance exerted by the Fellowes family.
References to the aesthetics of the structure of the vil-lage not only appeared in policy texts, but also figured in
the comments made by some of its residents who were
interviewed by the author. 3 For many residents the
physical structure of the village and the historical char-
acter of particular properties clearly held some appeal
and in some cases seemed to have exerted some motiva-
tional influence on their residential movement into thevillage:
‘‘One of the attractions of the physical appearanceof the village is . . . the fact that there is a largeproportion of old houses . . . there are still somesignificant areas where there is no developmentat all, so there are big gaps between the housesin some areas, and there are a lot of old maturetrees and hedgerows and there are glimpses offields, well more than glimpses, and you haveviews and vantage points, and all of which is whatmakes Shotesham look how it does’’.
‘‘We had always liked . . . [the village] . . . therewas an air of conservation about it with nice oldbuildings, with a rural atmosphere I suppose . . .[Moved because] this house came on the market,we had always liked the look of the house and justhad to go for it because, it does not come on themarket very often, it was just one of those kindhouses’’
There were even some cases where there were quite
direct legitimatory interpretations of the impacts of
landed property:
‘‘Well there hasn�t been any huge estates, and ithadn�t been at that point suburbanised. It hasremained village size/scale. They had the scaleright. The reason why this village was as it was,was because there was a landowner, Fellowes,and he kept control over this village. That�s whyit wasn�t large scale like a lot of the other villages.You generally find that, I think, that when youhave a good land-owner around, the land is pro-tected, the village is protected’’.
Shotesham was not only made as a space for gentrifi-
cation via the legacies of its past as a closed settlement,
but was also made through its transition to a more open
structure of landholding. Three aspects of this transition
can be highlighted. First, at the time of the initial break-
up of the Fellowes estates, a series of small holdings and
cottages with gardens were sold off. The propertiesformed attractive country cottages, while the land and
garden were in several cases sold for in-fill develop-
ments. Second, larger plots of agricultural land were
M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494 489
sold off to form a series of owner-occupied farms. Dur-
ing the course of the second half of the twentieth cen-
tury, however, many of these farmers also sold off
parts of their holdings for residential infill develop-
ments. Third, some of the more successful owner-occu-
pier farmers expanded their holdings, purchasing orrenting land from other landowners, and have then
sought to concentrate their use of agricultural proper-
ties. This practice has resulted in the sale of farmhouses,
barns and agricultural outbuildings which had become
devalorised in the movement towards a more capital
intensive and centralised agriculture. An examination
of the planning registers for the village suggests that
while in the 1970s permissions were being sought to en-large and alter agricultural buildings to make them more
suited to a modernising agriculture, or else to change
their use towards a more industrial usage, by the early
1980s there was a rise in applications for conversions
to residential use. The 1980s saw the onset of the conver-
sion of barns for residential usage and by the 1990s there
is evidence of �professional and �hobby gentrifiers� (Phil-lips, 1999b) operating in the area, purchasing propertiesfor conversion and onward sale.
It is possible to further suggest that there may well
have been different agents and types of gentrification
associated with various points in the transformation of
the property structure of the village, closely reminiscent
of those identified in an urban context by Zukin (1990)
(see Table 4), and also in a rural context by Smith and
Phillips (2000). So, for example, while there may havebeen some movement in of new social groups in the first
half of the twentieth century the real period of gentrifi-
cation in Shotesham appears to have commenced in
the early 1970s, following a period of rural depopulation
Table 5
Property relation, demographic change and gentrification phases in Shotesh
Period Property relations Demo
Pre–1919 Closed, patriarchal village Depo
1919–1950s Break-up Fellowes estate; emergence
of owner-occupier farmers and residents
Expan
some
(inclu
1950s–1960s Tightened control on development;
concentration of agricultural development
Contr
Early 1970s Property-owners attempt to convert properties
for new agricultural and industrial uses
Start
1980s Devalorised properties and small parcels of
land sold for residential conversion and new build
Popul
1990s Pressures for development conflict with conservation
values and policies
Increa
and sustained devalorisation of agrarian property and
small, fragmented, land-holdings. At this time there
were a few adventurous, pioneering, households who
purchased properties with an eye to conversion or new
build. However, it is the late 1970s and 1980s that gen-
trification in the village starts to gather pace with agri-cultural land-owners selling off a series of properties
and land-blocks to both incoming households and also,
to an increasing extent, to professional agents of gentri-
fication such as local builders and property companies.
The 1980s and particularly the 1990s saw household
numbers increasing at a faster rate than the population
as a whole, a feature which as noted earlier as been seen
as indicative of gentrified population turnover. By the1990s this professionalism has become even more pro-
nounced, not least because of heightened concerns over
development pressures and the need for any large-scale
piece of gentrification to be designed with conservation
policies clearly in mind. As a result there is considerable
use of agencies such as planning and design consultants,
many of which are located in surrounding villages and
specialise in the refurbishment and construction of ruralgentrified properties (see Table 5).
Turning to Thornage, it has already been shown that
in the early twentieth century Thornage had rather more
open property structure than Shotesham, although one
proprietor, Lord Hastings, still owned about a quarter
of the village by value. Thornage also experienced a
rather different subsequent history of property relation-
ships in that there was no estate break-up in the earlytwentieth century and indeed there is some suggestion
that landowership became more concentrated in the
hands of Hasting family: Harris (1974) described the
villages as having �one absentee landowner, owning
am
graphic character Agents and forms of gentrification
pulation –
sion in population and
new build in village
ding council estate)
In movement of population;
mixed social character
action in population Period of devalorisation of agricultural
and residential properties
of �population turnaround� Few �pioneering� gentrifiers colonisedevalued properties
ation increase Middle class and marginal gentrification
as capital and �sweat-equity� areinvested to realise value of village as
accessible yet rural settlement
sing population Professionalisation of gentrification—
architects, design and planning
consultants employed to work around
conservation requirements;
local property companies, landowners
and �hobby gentrifiers� seek out
gentrifiable properties
Table 6
Property relation, demographic change and gentrification phases in Thornage
Period Property relations Demographic character Agents and forms of gentrification
Early C20th–1950s Closed village Depopulation –
1950s–1970s Increase in �closure� as large landowners
produce �prosperous agriculture� bysubstitute capital for labour
Depopulation Devalorisation of agricultural and
residential properties within the village;
heightened need for capital encourages
further sale of property; some properties
bought and converted
1970s–1980s Devalorisation of service properties as
a result of declining population
Further contraction
in population
Devalorisation of service properties within
the village; some properties bought and converted;
restricted scope for development acts to channel
colonisation towards the retired and
second-home owners
1980s Devalorised properties and small
parcels of land sold for residential
conversion and new build
Increasing population Increasing marginal gentrification major
properties have become gentrified
1990s Pressures for development conflict
with conservation values and policies
Increasing population Massification of gentrification—local
property companies seek to new-build
gentrifiable properties to over-come
shortage of properties
490 M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494
virtually all the land, renting it out to two or three ten-
ant farmers�. 4 There was also a steady decline in the
population of the village after 1901 (see Fig. 2), and in-
deed the parish figured as one of the areas exhibiting
greatest levels of depopulation in the 1960s in Drudy
(1978). As outlined earlier, Drudy attributes the depop-ulation of North Norfolk primarily to the substitution
of capital for labour, and a resultant fall in the agricul-
tural labour force, and Harris� (1974) study of Thornage
suggests that by the early 1970s few people in the village
worked in agriculture, although some worked in agricul-
tural service industries. Furthermore, it appears that the
Hasting�s estate sold off many of its village holdings (the
proportion of privately rented accommodation recordedin the Census dropped dramatically from 51 percent in
1971 to 16 percent by 1981), at the same time as expand-
ing its ownership of the surrounding agricultural land,
actions which conform to the arguments of people such
as Bettley-Smith and Bowler and Lewis discussed
previously.
The situation in Thornage seems to closely parallel
that observed by Spencer (1997) in theOxfordshire villageof Stoke Talmage whereby the estate owner�s policy of
partial disinvestment was focused on village residential
properties, one consequence of whichwas that no agricul-
tural land was released for additional housing. Indeed,
this selling up of property may well have displaced some
residents who were unable to find the money to purchase
properties and led initially to property abandonment with
the number of resident households falling in the 1960s and1970s (see Fig. 2). The village also evidently lost several
4 Harris uses a pseudonym for his village study, but as outlined in
Phillips (forthcoming-b), it was very evidently Thornage.
services at this time: Harris (1974, p. 1) talks of the village
having a shop, cumpost-office and off-licence, a dairy and
‘‘a flourishing garage cum contracting business’’,
although the village had already evidently lost a public
house and blacksmith foundry. Today the village has
none of these services.The actions of the Hastings estate, and parallel ac-
tions by other landowners, can be seen to have had five
types of consequence which were of significance in later
transforming the village into a space of gentrification.
First, the housing sold by the estate was in several cases
bought by �middle class� incomers, many of whom are
now seen by themselves and others as long established
members of the village. Second, a series of non-residen-tial properties also became available for purchase and
conversion. From the mid 1980s it appears, for example,
that a series of farmhouses, barns and agricultural build-
ings quite centrally located in the village were vacated
and then converted into residential use (see Phillips,
2001b). Third, the decline in local services provided fur-
ther buildings suitable for conversion: the village post-
office and shop, the village pub, and blacksmith�s forgehave all been converted into residential properties, while
the site of the garage used to construct a series of new
residential properties. Fourth, the expansion in agricul-
tural land-holdings outside the village restricted land for
new-build development, which in turn led to increasing
prices for existing residential properties and rising values
for potentially convertible properties. New build devel-
opments in Thornage have been significantly less thanin Shotesham over the period from the 1970s, and even
very small outbuildings have been converted into resi-
dential properties. Fifth, restricted land availability has
also thwarted various attempts to develop communal
facilities, which arguably has made the village less
attractive for people with children or those who wish
M. Phillips / Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494 491
to �move-in and join-in� (Cloke et al., 1995, 1998; Phil-
lips, 2001a) by participating in some communal activi-
ties. By contrast, Shotesham has a much more open
spatial form which has proved very popular to incomers
with families, despite the loss of its school. Thornage has
proved much more popular with the retired and second-home owners who appear to value it for its quietness.
There has also been continued pressure for new-build,
particularly from local building companies seeking sites
for estate type constructs, although the only scheme so
far approved has been on the old garage site with houses
which closely conform in style to previously gentrified
properties. Hence, as in Shotesham, there have been a
range of agencies associated with the gentrification ofthe village as different times (see Table 6).
5. Conclusions
This paper has focused attention on the making of
space for rural gentrification, both discursively and
materially. With regard to the former, the paper hasemphasised the differential constructions of rural and
urban gentrification, whereby the latter is more widely,
more complexly and more divergently constructed than
the latter. The paper has sought to draw on notions of
gentrification as residential refurbishment and develop-
ment through capital investment and associated social
displacement, ideas present in early constructs of urban
gentrification change, the more recent arguments of so-called �production-side� theorists of gentrification such
as Smith and some studies of rural gentrification. It is
argued in this paper that these ideas also have some as
commensurablity with other areas of rural research,
including some notions of �post-productivist country-
side�, and also with some arguments relating rural demo-
graphic change with planning and property relations.
Using these ideas, the paper has focused on the gentri-fication of rural Norfolk. It is argued that contemporary
actions to gentrify rural spaces may well occur in material
contexts which are conditioned in part by legacies of past
actions and relations. In particular, the paper explores
arguments which suggest that past structures of land-
ownership exert a continuing influence through the
land-use planning system, and that this system in turn
conditions the geography of rural gentrification. Supportfor this argument is found through an analysis of popula-
tion and household change, tenure structure and settle-
ment classification, and also through a more intensive
study of gentrification in two Norfolk villages. This more
intensive study revealed how in both villages land and
properties which are now valued for gentrification had
previously become devalued for agricultural and service
capital, and how a range of agents of gentrification hadbecome implicated, at different points in time, in their
reconstruction for gentrification. The intensive study also
raises some questions about the use of surrogate mea-
sures of landownership such as size of the private rented
sector as recorded in the 1971 Census. Whilst classified as
�open� parishes on the surrogate measure, it is suggested
that both study villages had a �closed� structure of land-ownership at the close of the nineteenth century. Thisshows clearly both the value of in-depth study based on
direct and more contemporaneous sources, such as the
Lloyd George�s 1910 �Domesday� survey, although the
strength of the apparent relationship between population
change, tenurial structure and planning settlement classi-
fication is suggestive that the surrogate measures may be
of indicative if not absolute value.
The intensive analysis also showed that rural spacescan be made ready for gentrification in quite different
ways. In the case of Shotesham, for example, the pres-
ence and then rapid break-up of a closed property sys-
tem was of central significance in the making of the
village as a gentrifiable space, whilst in Thornage land-
ownership remained �closed� but residential, agriculturaland service properties were sold-off to allow for capital
intensification within agriculture. Both villages werenot only made ready for gentrification in slightly differ-
ent ways, but were made ready at differing timings and
though differing sets of agencies. They were, as a conse-
quence, also made as slightly different spaces: Shote-
sham, for example, was made in a way which appealed
to those desiring a �community idyll�, whereas Thor-
nage�s attractions appear to lie more within a peaceful
pastoral. This is not to say that everybody in these gen-trified spaces adheres completely to these desires—there
is plenty of contestation over the current and future con-
struction of these spaces (see Phillips, 2001b)—nor that
the processes of gentrification outlined here account for
all the differences between the villages. Other influences
include the differential positioning of the two villages in
relation to Norwich and to coastal tourist attractions.
Furthermore, the making of these gentrified spaces isfar from over. Not only is there continued turn-over
of population within existing residential properties and
further plans for conversion and residential new-build,
but there have also been retail and leisure investments
in the areas surrounding both villages, investments
which might be seen to constitute the emergence of re-
gional gentrification �socio-spatial complexes� wherebyareas take on a symbolic identity of a gentrified spacewhich in turn becomes a commodity for recreational, re-
tail and finance capital.
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