You can survive out in the sticks

Shropshire market towns appear to be bucking the trend and doing rather well - thanks to locals using the facilities. Ben Bentley visits four small towns to find out what they offer.

Imagine this: You are trapped in a small Shropshire market town, there’s no way out, and for a month you must survive using only the facilities right on your doorstep.

Could you exist? Could normal life continue? Or would the prospect of being cut off from main conurbations and out-of-town services mean bring everyday existence to a monumental halt?

We put four small-ish market towns to the test to see if they still have all the facilities to sustain modern life.

How would Much Wenlock, which triggered the experiment after being hit hard by the recent closure of Harley Bank, along with Craven Arms, Bishop’s Castle and Ellesmere fare if all the roads out were closed for several weeks?

Certainly in years gone by, towns and even many villages would have been self-sustaining. But today, in an age when the high street has disappeared to the middle of an industrial estate or into cyberspace thanks to the internet, and when some town hall services are operated remotely from a faceless business park, it would seem to be an increasingly tricky prospect.

Certainly smaller towns and villages are becoming ever more reliant upon out-of-town services: post offices are closing down; banks are leaving town; pubs are shutting; schools are being scaled back; petrol stations are disappearing to large supermarkets - these are but a few examples of change to the traditional town and village.

Shops, facilities and services are critical in surviving life in a small town. The cliche, “use them or lose them”, carries a ring of truth, but each of the towns here appear on the whole to be thriving because of a desire to remain local.

In Much Wenclock, as in each of our other towns here, shops are busy and, for example, at A Ryan & Son butchers there’s a sizeable queue that stretches from Paddy Ryan’s meat cleaver, right out the shop and halfway down the street.

In Ellesmere, butcher Sid Hodgkins who has run SJ Hodgkins butchers on Scotland Street for the last 38 years, says he has seen changes and that it would have been easier in the past to survive without venturing out of town.

But everything he needs is here on his door step if you need it.

He says: “If you had to go to A&E you would have to go out of town but apart from that we’ve got mostly everything you need - butchers do well, grocers do well, the deli does well.

“You’ve got the fish market on Tuesdays in the market; you’ve got the youth club in the market - you’ve got most things but some people like to out of town.”

Employment is a consideration, however. Can you continue to work without leaving town? Certainly with internet access and roaming technology, more people are making use of the possibility.

And certainly on the days of the experiment the towns we visited were bustling, the streets healthily packed with local people who clearly have little reason to leave town and it seems that if push came to shove most inhabitants could survive the small market town experiment.

Some kids might not be able to go to school; hospital might prove difficult but apart from that, we seem to be using the shops and facilities.

The vibrant atmosphere is summed up by a man who, during a bout of shopping in Wenlock, is unconcerned at having mislaid his spouse in the hubbub.

Plonking himself down on a bench the gentleman, George Chambers from Much Wenlock imparts a philosophy that seems to sum up the self-sufficiency of a small rural market town.

He says to another shopper: “I seem to have lost my wife. She’s in one of the shops somewhere. But they do say that in Much Wenlock, if you stand still for ten minutes you’ll find anyone.

“She won’t have gone far. She never does.”

Click on the numbers below for the ’survive-ability’ rating of each of our towns