For sheer entertainment, there’s nothing like rummaging through all the changes to our local council areas over the last sixty years. These were all aimed, so the government said, at improving things.

Today they’re at it again.

For many years, Ashmansworth and Crux Easton came under the Kingsclere and Whitchurch Rural District Council. We had our own councillor on it. We didn’t need improving. The rates were low, the district was rural, and the council’s letter headings were in elegant gothic script, all very re-assuring, as befits a rural district.

The first sign of trouble was a government proposal in 1970 for abolishing the county of Hampshire and creating a new entity called ‘The South Hampshire Metropolitan Area’ alongside Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. Somehow this ‘South Hampshire Metropolitan Area’ even included Faccombe! Ashmansworth and Crux Easton were to be hived off to a new Berkshire which would stretch eastwards as far as Heathrow Airport.

That wild scheme vanished with a change of government. But it was followed in 1974 by another. This one scrapped our local Kingsclere and Whitchurch RDC and dumped us in with Basingstoke, a new town, twenty miles away, rapidly filling up with Londoners from slum clearance schemes.

I’ve kept that 1974 introductory poster from the new Basingstoke Council, entitled: ‘Basingstoke Information Bulletin: Keep This For Your Information.’ There’s a fine spread of photos of the new councillors, trying hard not to look like a rogues’ gallery. On the other hand, the paid officers of the new council look quite human; people you might even invite to dinner.

Even the new Director of Planning looks perfectly affable, and gives his department’s address, rather charmingly, as “New Market Street (above Nicholson’s Sweet Shop).”

But don’t be fooled. The significant thing to note is the money. They announce an immediate increase in our rates from 33.0p to 50.6p. They promise further increases every year from 1975 to 1978 to bring us into line with the rates of spendthrift Basingstoke, then standing at a massive 58.2p.

The next idea, in 1994, was to transfer Highclere and its neighbours to West Berkshire. That stirred up a hornets’ nest. I thought Highclere’s protests showed a commendable loyalty towards their old county of Hampshire. But a more cynical neighbour said he thought it reflected the very high council tax they’d have to pay, if they finished up in West Berkshire!

Agricola, July 2025