A WAR-TIME VILLAGE EVICTION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 71, 17 December 1917, Page 13

A WAR-TIME VILLAGE EVICTION

TO MAKE WAY FOR HUGE BRITISH

DOCKING SCHEME

PATHETIC SCENES

The British Government recently permitted publication of information relating to certain "purposes of urgent national importance" for which the land on which the village of Beachley, in England, stands is needed. Over a hundred residents, occupying 29 cottages, were evicted in order to 'further the scheme. The Admiralty's operations on the site of Beachley and the surrounding fields—forming a peninsula of about 250 acres at tho junction of the Severn and the Wye—will result in tho creation of one of the largest series of dry docks in the country. Tho engineering works contemplated are on a very extensive* scale, and aro being pushed farward with all speed. Competent engineers state that tho work cannot be completed hi less than eighteen months, and will probably take two years, even if tho Government withdraws many thousands of men from other -undertakings in order to exnedite it. Already the preparations for a short railway from the G.AV.B-. main line to the end of the peninsula are well advanced.

For the War—And After. At the same time the Admiralty have taken over, for the duration of the war, the_ Standard Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, which recently established a largo yard on the River *\Yye at Chepstow. The precise relations belweon the Government and the Standard Shipbuilding Company have not been made public, but it is stated that the works at Beachley may be regarded as an extension of tho Standard Company's operations, and that after the war the new yard and dry docks will be ovor by the company, The Standard Shipbuilding Company harring son.e scheme of nationalisation was formed in June of last year with brilliant financial prospects owing to the enormous prices being paid for new shipping, and the yard has been rapidly develooed, though the work has until now been hindered by shortage of labour. Bofii the Chepstow and Beachley sites are ideally situated at tho gates of tho South Wales and Forest of Dean coal and iron fields, and on tho edge of deep-water channels. The company is ono of the most powerful "combines" ever "aunclied, although the initial canital (all privately subscribed) only amounted to £300/000.

The Evictions. Writing from Chepstow, Mr., Hugh Martin, the "Daily Mail's" 'special commissioner, says:— At the village of Beachley, three miles from here, I have been watching 'the war machino at work, observing the behaviour of men and women things caught in it. An ancient couple, in their golden wedding year, a widow with eight children, a woman whose husband is at the front—this is the sort of stuff the machine has got hold of, not in Belgium, but at Beachley, in Gloucestershire. Eviction notices were served on September 3 to take effect eleven days later, and tho last remnant of the tinv community is now goincr out into "the world. In a short time Boacbley, that lias clustered round' its small church these centwrios past, that saw Offa and Alfred and Cromwell's Ironsides, that lived and loved and" laid its fathers to rest generation by generation in Cod's acre, will have ceased to exist. This is how the news was broken:— . Directorate.of Lands, War Office and Ministry of Munitions, Sept. 1, 1917. Dear Sir, —I have been instructed that it has been found necessary that you should vacate your house by the 14th inst. if you are unable to vacate 'it before. As the property has been taken oyer under the Defence of the Realm Regulations, the compensation payablo to you will be limited to the actual monetary loss to which you will be put owing to the Department having to take over th° premises. I shall be glad if you wiTI make your arrangements as soon as possible, as I am instructed th.-t the matter is most ur<">nt. I shall hone to see you on Tnes«Tav next, the ith inst. —Yours faithfully. Tf. Driver J.onns, Major. (Deputy Chief A r nlu«M' and Compensation Officer.) The Entire Village,

The number of homos on which the machine dropped this high explosive was twenty-nine—that is, the entire village—and tho nnmSer of men, wonicii and children who liave to turn out is, as nearly as I can discover, 106. Tho machine did not drop it till Parliament had ceased to sit, and, although it must have laid its plans months asm, it timed the shell to explodo so soon after delivery as to prevent any effectual public protest. That is,-why I have testified to the machine's coldness and efficiency.

EuL says an "official explanation" ]mblisTicd_ in the "Morning Post," it is the wish and intention of the. officials "to show every consideration to Iho displaced tenants." "There is I'vcrv desire to avoid inflietinfr needless hardship on the twelve to fifteen cottagers who have to he displaced." "It is further pom led out that the present matter is a very small one in comparison with the large operations of a similar kind that have taken place during the war." Twelve to fifteen cottagers! Yet tho most casual inquiry would have shown the number iu approach tho hundred, after making allowance for tho establishments of a farmer and tho squire. T have- spent the morning with tho villagers. Richard Trayhorn, tlio patriarch of tho place, was still in the old liomo—a greaf.-linwVd, naticnt fisherman. His wife, unable to move around this many a day, sat by the fireplace, below the china dogs, peeling vegetables for the last Sunday diniit. Roth are old-age pensioners. They will liave "vacated their house" by to-morrow evening.

"Nowhere to Co." said Trayhern very euictly, "the wife and mo we've lived Here nigh on fifty years. My father lived here, and my grandfather, who built n fair part o' Beachle.y, and started the sprat fishing. AVo'm settled round this spot a, matter o' two hundred year." Many of these people have absolutely nowhere to go—or" would have had nowhere but for the kindness of Colonel Marling, who is temporarily housing the Trayherns and some others, and the heroic efforts of the vicar to lind .™v vacant corner by any local hearth. • :iat bitterness there is among the villagers centres around the failure of the Oovernment to provide them with so much as a hut in which to shelter from I the weather. Chepstow town ,s al-' ready full to overflowing, and there is not a vacant cotfagojn the whole countryside. Most of' tile men are 'lishcrnieii, wliose livelihood vanishes when they leave this immediate neighbourhood. I came upon case after ease of men and women in process of being, as it .were, uprooted from the soil. Or one might enlarge upon such a case as that of Mrs. Rickard, with her eight fatherless children. "We know we're at war: we know well enough we've got to suffer; miE this way o' making us suffer be bitter hard," said an old ladv.