Epilogue

In the Epilogue Robert Jeffery brings together his astute observations on how the local history of the village of Tong in Shropshire typifies the concept of a unique 'place' and how stories have grown and evolved over the centuries.

Tong Church
St. Bartholomew's Church, Tong

“Less easy to define is the way a community is given identity by the way people experience it and talk about it. Tong Village is a distinctive entity, the outlying areas less so. A good view, a fine building, trees and vegetation can lift our hearts or as Tony Hiss puts it:

'Particular places around us, if we're wide open to perceive them, they can sometimes give us a mental life.'

But there must be that willingness to see it. Through it comes the understating that our environment is actually life sustaining. We need a place where we can be. Where we live also conditions what we do and what sort of people we become. This would have been particularly the case in an enclosed feudal environment, but in so far as people can choose where they live, they both mould and are moulded their surroundings. Winifred Gallagher calls this "psychological ecology" she quotes the work of Roger Barker looking at people's behaviour:

'The more he watched all sorts of people go about their business in shops, playing fields, offices, churches, and bars, the more certain he became that individuals and their inanimate surroundings together create systems of a higher order that take on a life of their own.'

This can lead people to be very keen to maintain things the way they are, and only take to change slowly. This goes some way to explain why people stick to myths and legends. The story has, in some way, become part of their identity.

It is this matter of story, which seems to dominate over all other aspects of what makes up a community. The storytellers sustain it. Every person, every building, has its own story and together they make up the story of the community. The stories are passed on. They are altered and enriched in the telling. Some stories are forgotten. Some are rediscovered. Those who have examined the nature of story, point out that there are only a certain number of basic stories and many of them (like The Old Curiosity Shop) involve a journey. Many are essentially the biography of a person or a place. Tong tells its own ongoing autobiography. ”

For more about Tong please buy the book. The profits from the sale of the book will go towards maintaining Tong Church.