squirearchal

The film tells the story of Jack’s induction and military training; depicts the Kiplings’ squirearchal lifestyle at Bateman’s, their Jacobean manor house in Sussex; and explores the family tensions over Jack’s brave but foolhardy enlistment.

In terms of the typology presented in Chapter 3, it is the gentlemen farmers - the traditional village squires - who have probably been most affected and who have watched the newcomers add to the general decline of squirearchal power and influence.

Of course, a farm worker could acknowledge that the obverse side of squirearchal autocracy could be a benevolent concern for his own welfare and this could confer a sense of security and harmony on class relationships which could be extremely durable.

Open villages, on the other hand, were centres of the rural underworld - some of them notoriously so - and displayed their independence of squirearchal authority not only by engaging in petty criminal activity but by becoming centres of pre-political and political activity which opposed 'official' values and attitudes.