High Housing Prices Turning English Villages Into ‘Old Folks’ Homes’ : Britain: Rising property values are pricing young people out of the market. Increasingly, only wealthy urban couples can afford to purchase the dwellings, which they convert to vacation retreats.

This village, with its old stone houses gathered round a cobbled square under a gentle dusting of snow, is a picture-postcard scene. But the tranquility of this apparently timeless place in Yorkshire, in the north of England, hides serious human problems caused by rapid social change.

Visitors usually fall in love with the place in summer when Wharfedale’s slopes are green and lush and the skies are blue. Those with money may buy a weekend cottage. Those with not so much may sell their home in Bradford (an industrial town) or London when they retire, and move in.

Villages like Grassington--population 1,000--on the western edge of Yorkshire and within reach of the scenically beautiful Lake District, are being transformed. Nearby Kettlewell has become a ghost village. Most of its houses are now second homes, empty for most of the year.

Grassington has expensive shops. Expensive, at least, in local terms. Not so expensive for the wealthy “off-cumdens,” local parlance for those who have come from far off.

Local people, with resignation born of low expectations, tend to play down their problems. Most are affected, however, by the shortage of affordable housing.

Prices in the estate agent’s window are not much less than those in the crowded South, with plenty in the 100,000 to 200,000 bracket--a range of $175,000 to $350,000.

The resultant forced migration of young couples breaks up the strong family networks which have hitherto sustained rural people in the absence of welfare services, often located in distant large towns.

“There are far too many old people and far too few young people living in this dale. We’re getting a seriously imbalanced area. I think it distorts the whole place,” said Peter Walbank, chairman of the Chamber of Trade and a local shopkeeper. “Often young people can’t buy houses. They have to move down to Skipton, where houses were until recently considerably cheaper. Part of Skipton is called Little Grassington because young people live there who couldn’t get houses here.”

Grassington is trying to interest a housing association in taking over part of the old hospital site to build cheap new homes specifically for young people who want to stay near their families. “People get married and would like to live in the village,” Walbank said. “I can think of a dozen folk at the moment. But they can’t, and they move out.”

“It’s becoming an old folks’ home in Grassington,” said Edgar Darwin, sheep farmer and chairman of the parish council. “There’s no point building houses if people haven’t got jobs. . . . It’s sad that the young people have to move out. Two of my sons have moved away.”

Farming has seriously declined. “About 40 years ago there would be about 10 families living on small farms around Grassington,” Darwin said. “There are three left. The quarries used to employ loads of men, but now it’s all machinery. We had a firm of builders that used to employ quite a lot, but it’s just about wound down.”

Tourism provides seasonal jobs, but Darwin is opposed to further expansion. “If you saturate the place and play all the time to what tourists want, you probably destroy what they are coming for. I’m not in favor of building big hotels.”

If the young people have problems, so do the increasing numbers of the old. “We do know there is a lot of loneliness here,” Walbank said.

George Rhodes, director of the Samaritans in Bradford, said his office receives many calls from lonely people in rural areas like Grassington. “Generally from all the information we have had, the rural communities do get forgotten. It’s not just the elderly. Farmers and farm laborers are very desperate and lonely people.

“There’s a lot of pride among farmers, and when they have a problem they are frightened of losing face,” Rhodes said. “They will go into a pub at the weekend, and not one of them wants to admit that they have problems with their stock or whatever. We have known of people who have got so lonely they have taken their own lives. There’s quite a high suicide rate in rural areas.”

Altogether different problems beset Rita Ward, a young mother originally from St. Albans, near London, who moved to Grassington in 1983 when her husband landed a job with the national parks.

“Transport is a terrible problem,” she said. “Very often I don’t have the car. Skipton is nine miles away and the buses are infrequent and expensive. The fare is more than 2 pounds to return. On Sundays there’s virtually no service.”

Catrin Maby, development officer with the Yorkshire Rural Community Council, bears this out: “Public transport is a massive problem. It raises a question of equal opportunities. What transport there is is likely to be the family car, but they only have one. Whoever goes to work has the car. The mother or elderly people or teen-agers are disadvantaged.”

Farther north in tiny Horton-in-Ribblesdale--a few rows of white-painted terraced cottages gathered round a hump-backed bridge at the foot of fields of sheep--Sandra Millman is one of the lucky few. She and her husband bought their terraced cottage for 17,000--about $30,000--four years ago. Today it would cost 55,000--about $96,000--well beyond their range.

Her husband is a wagon driver, transporting limestone from the local quarry. They have a 7-month-old son, James and, with family on hand to help out, they are happy with their lot. But theirs is the old pattern of life, which social change is destroying.

“There are not many people of my age,” she said. “There used to be loads of young ones.” The cottages on each side of hers are now holiday homes. “There was a young lad who got married this year. They would have liked the top house, but it went for a vast amount.”

Sheila Haywood, a retired college lecturer, believes that Horton is in jeopardy: “If all the farming subsidies were removed and the farmers could no longer farm sheep, and if the quarries were closed--there is a strong feeling that they are tearing the hillside apart--it would mean a whole batch of young people, with no work, having to move.”

In the 18th Century, Horton had its own grammar school. Now there is only a primary school; after that, children must travel to other towns for education.

“More and more of the life of the young people is taken out of the village and farther and farther away,” Haywood said.