A Sign o’ the Times: 380 border homes and Cariad the pig

Stephen Price

I have a little issue with ‘property porn’ as it’s so often dubbed nowadays.

Despite my love of all things ‘houses’, architecture, design, and a previous lapping up of Grand Designs, Location x 3 and the like, when it comes to anything with a touch of ‘Escape to the Country’ about it, I simply can’t watch – especially when said television shows visit Wales.

I’ve more or less given up on television of late, but every now and then I find myself dog sitting for others and catch up on things I don’t have the chance to watch on Sky, Netflix and Prime.

Last weekend, I found myself with a few things to ‘tick off the list’ – one of which was Wicked (I lasted just over ten minutes before I could take no more, musical theatre being.. well.. not for me).. but before I could work out how to actually watch said travesty, I found myself grappling with the Sky remote and its back button, which kept taking me back to the audio of an episode of ‘A Country Life for Half the Price’ with Kate Humble.

And I really, really, wish I hadn’t caught the two or so collective minutes that I did.

Now, let me preface this with an admission… I wrote rather disparagingly before about ‘My Welsh Chapel Dream’, and while I generally hit the mark with the Nation audience, that one didn’t go down so well (at least with readers who don’t usually read our content)..

My argument was that buildings in Wales paid for and built by Welsh people, our ancestors, should remain in those communities’ hands, but in it I dared to focus on this one, this one that was one of the supposed good ones. The white saviour type we’re all sitting here waiting for, that is.

As evidenced by support given to Capel Rhondda for its community purchase, there are those that get my point and don’t hang on to a soundbite and lose sight of the bigger picture, but a cuddly TV character with some Welsh ancestry used as an example gets a free pass.

There’s also the accusation of xenophobia should anyone dare upset the poor victim English incomer, or I can oft be told I’m jealous (spoiler alert: I’ve got a nice house in a nice part of a nice town). Anyway, back to the point..

A Country Life for Half the Price

If I was looking for some filler from Channel Five to make this piece longer, I wasn’t going to get it. Described briefly as: “Kate Humble joins brave families as they embark on ambitious moves to pastures new”, that’s pretty much all you need to know.

The episode I caught a horrifying glimpse of, while I was then subjected to audio while wrestling with a Sky menu screen, saw an English family move to.. of course.. Wales.

First aired on Channel 5 on 15 August, the latest episode saw Monmouthshire resident Kate revisit rural Carmarthenshire “where a family and their small menagerie of animals relocated from Reading. Is the country adventure paying dividends?”

I caught something about a pig called Cariad and that was enough. More than enough.

I assume Cariad’s flesh will provide a snack for the family in a few months time, at which point Kate, who herself moved to Wales from England, will have found others to join her on the great escape so many are wishing to take right now.

No value judgment, no punching down on rich English incomers, no racism honest guv, but a sign of the times.

Our villages, entire counties even, have been made unsustainable, unliveable, with no jobs, no nearby schools, no functionality – no longer for us, but perfect for those with cash to spare in search of the good life.

Meanwhile, it’s a case of joining the hordes swelling Cardiff, Newport, Manchester or Bristol for the rest of us, lost in this in-between world of post-industrial what-the-hell-is-going-on we’ve all found ourselves in.

But, Cariad the pig and her salivating owners are doing OK, and Kate’s got plenty more lined up for series six. Indeed, the next episode of season 5, which aired on Friday 22 August, was filmed in Ceredigion – perfect!

More, more, more

Elsewhere in Wales, on the borders of Wrexham, and conveniently placed for the border of England, Castle Green Homes has submitted detailed plans for a 380-home development on Stansty’s well-known ‘Circus Fields’ in Wrexham.

The fields either side of the Stansty Chain Road next to the A483 were granted outline planning permission in May 2024 for up to 455 homes by Wrexham County Borough Council’s Planning Committee.

The plan is to build 107 four-bedroom properties, 183 three-beds, 84 two-beds and six single bed apartments.

If approved the work will be carried out in three phases. Phase One will see the field directly behind Jones Brothers’ Farm Shop completed. Phase 2a will see construction completed on the adjacent field to Phase One. Phase 2b involves construction on the opposite side of the road.

When outline permission was originally granted, residents submitted a 193-name petition opposing the plans and objections were raised by Gwersyllt Community Council.

“The site is too large and unsuitable for development because it its proximity to the A483 and A541,” it argued.

“The scale of development would generate a huge increase in traffic on highway network, increasing highway safety issues including congestion, speeding and safety problems associated with vehicular access.

“Stansty Chain link road is a rural lane with no footway or street lighting and restricted width at the northern end with very limited room for two vehicles to pass. The site forms a significant part of the green belt between Wrexham and the community of Gwersyllt. The development would serve only to encourage coalescence between town and country, harmful to the Green Belt and would not be in keeping with policies in place to protect Green Belt land.”

Neighbouring Rhosddu Community Council shared their concerns and also formally objected at the time.

Wrexham’s Planning committee however granted permission in line with the officers’ recommendation and the Local Development Plan, which was still a material planning consideration when the committee made its decision.

A local development plan that wants more council tax payers, whatever the cost, that’s what this is about – and it all begins in Westminster.

As we’re all being bled dry for dysfunctional councils to act as demi-gods, their tied-up-hands mean more houses, more people, but less of everything that’s needed to actually help it all run smoothly.

The same is happening ‘down south’ in Monmouthshire, Newport and Cardiff, as new-build houses join village to village, or stretch town and city with bigger beiger, office-designed boundary-lines.

Abergavenny is due for some more, Newport is due for some more, Cwmbran, Magor.. you name it.

Need we ask who these houses are for?

And yet those in Chepstow and Wrexham, majority English-speaking but Welsh nonetheless, find themselves without a voice.

Our councils know better, our Government know better, and Wales needs more, more, more, to feed the machine that gives us nothing back in return.

Wystopia (a Welsh dystopia)

I take part in our letter writing series, ‘A Letter From’ from time to time, and flex my inner bard in abstract, melancholic ways, and one idea I have for a future piece is a letter from Wales in a few centuries’ time.

In my letter, few ‘Welsh people’ speak our native language any more, while English incomers and their offspring make up the majority of the population, and it’s those too that make up the largest proportion of Welsh speakers.

I wonder, in that case, if we’re still singing Yma o Hyd, but with barely a Welsh person singing along.

In the song’s lyrics, do we think of the language and culture, as Dafydd Iwan wrote it to mean? Or do we also think of the Welsh people – many of whom, like most people I know, don’t speak Welsh?

Wales in the not-too-distant future, is destined look more and more like Cornwall, with Welsh people uprooted from their square miles, their own land even, while incomers piss around with Morris dancing Mari Lwyds, and rewrite our stories, but all will be well, we’ll still be singing Yma o Hyd.

It’s a disturbing vision, but one many disagree with me finding unsavoury.

In Cornwall’s search to be recognised as a country within the UK, I can’t help but feel ‘a country for whom?’ – for English retirees and those in search of the good life. What kind of country is that though, really?

My many visits to the land offer recognition – its beauty, its names, but its people have been displaced, but for a few, let’s not kid ourselves.

Wales was doing alright in one essential matter until a few decades back – and that’s our ‘presence’ here. Our schools, communities, our streets, they were ours, even if the country itself wasn’t – it’s undeniable.

Our recent ‘discovery’, our ‘worth’, our ‘sanctuary’ now headline-grabbing and available for half the price, is going to be our quick, final, act of subjugation. Who saw it coming this way? Through Rightmove?

So what will it mean to be a nation of a people outnumbered by incomers from the land next door? It’s going to happen before long – again, there’s no doubt, no kidding. From new build to council and farmhouse, it’s all for the taking.

More questions than answers, but in those questions, perhaps, a call to think about this ‘united’ Kingdom of ours.

Is being part of the UK really serving us, our people, as it should? We aren’t even equal with Scotland, let alone the actual string-pullers.

It might be a bumpy road for a while, but in ways that matter we’d function better if we went it alone, as a community, and not just a nation of ‘citizens’ and an overspill for the spiralling nation next door.

If only more parties fought louder for independence here and now, today. Imagine the possibilities. Just imagine them.

But I fear my dystopian ‘Letter From’, along with Cariad’s fate, is already written.

Watch A Country Life for Half the Price online now (or don’t).