The Village Community
In days past the village was a small and tight-knit community; since then it has undergone a rapid expansion. In 1950 its population was under 700; by 1975 it was over 1,000 and in 1990 it was just short of 2,000. However, the proximity of Colchester, with its large range of shops and facilities, has eventually forced all but one of the three shops in Layer to close. Despite this, the village has still managed to maintain its distinct character and feel.
Despite concerns over vandalism and so-called "yobbery" - a growing concern amongst the middle class in almost all rural areas of England - the village is generally regarded as a safe and happy place to be . Societies and clubs such as The Shoestring Theatre Company provide entertainment for the whole village community.
Read more about this topic: Layer De La Haye
Famous quotes containing the words village and/or community:
“A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers’ wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher’s ear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The peace loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to those violations of treaties and those ignorings of humane instincts which today are creating a state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through mere isolation or neutrality.... When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)