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B. Introduction to the estate village of Warter

Warter is a small village on the Yorkshire Wolds. It is situated some 16 miles (26 km.) from York and 24 miles (39 km.) from Hull. For nearly three hundred years Warter has been the property of a single owner and until 1969 the owners were resident in the parish for at least part of the year.

As with all villages Warter has undergone great changes since the end of the Victorian period.

• Warter Post Office

  It is much smaller: In 1901 Warter had a population of 559 but now fewer than 200 people live in the parish.
• It has far fewer shops and tradesmen: Today there is just one shop in Warter. One hundred years ago a trade directory and census returns record three general shops, two shoemaker's shops, a tailor's shop, a saddler's shop, and the workshops of two blacksmiths, two wheelwrights and a carpenter.
• It no longer has a place of worship: A hundred years ago it had three - an Anglican church, a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and a Primitive Methodist chapel.

  The former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, now a private house.

• Jobs have changed: Although Warter is still a farming settlement, the majority of the residents no longer work on the land as they did until less than fifty years ago.

What other changes do you think will have happened?
Create a bar chart of the population of Warter and other villages in the school catchment area for 1901-2001. (Click here for the figures you will need and use the BACK button on your browser to return here) Which village has seen the greatest drop in population and why?

Some things are unchanged:

• The village looks much as it did 100 years ago: Only a handful of the present village houses were built after 1900, and with the well-kept hedges and gardens it is still one of the prettiest villages in Yorkshire, attracting visitors as it did in the late Victorian period.

1900

2000

List the differences you can spot between the two pictures of Warter reproduced above.

• It still has a village school: Now held in one of the few buildings erected in Warter in the late 20th century, the thriving school has 50 per cent more pupils than it did 100 years ago.
• All the land and almost all the houses still belong to one landowner: Unlike a hundred years ago the landowner does not live in the parish.