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On the bottom layer once rested all England. In the perfect economy of a few deft and happy strokes, Lark Rise reveals it as surviving principally in two households, those of Queenie, the lace-maker and bee-mistress, and 'Old Sally', whose grandfather, the eggler, had by his rheumatism to 'give up giving'. The old open fields community of co-operative self-help destroyed by the Enclosures is caught in the words. Old Sally is so closely identified with her house and furniture, its two-feet-thick walls making a snuggery for the gate-legged table, the dresser with its pewter and willow-pattern ware and the grandfather's clock, that they can no more be prised apart than the snail from its shell. In remembering the Rise when it was common land, Sally was carrying in her mind the England of small properties based on the land, [Pg x] the England whose native land belonged to its own people, not to a State masquerading as such, not even to the manorial lords who exacted services, but not from a landless proletariat. Still less to big business whose latifundia are the modern plan. Sally is self-supporting peasant England, the bedrock of all, solid as her furniture, enduring as her walls, the last of the longest of all lines.