Mr and Mrs Middle England in Ipplepen – Memories
Like so many South Devon villages, Ipplepen has had to adapt and change with the times.
At the monthly film night in the Village Hall, they often show old reels of village events before the main feature.
Some in the audience love it.
Others squirm, suddenly confronted with what they looked like twenty or thirty years ago.
It’s funny — even for those who were there at the time, the images already feel like they belong to a different, distant age.
Old photographs do more than preserve faces.
They capture the life of the village.
A time when Ipplepen had a bakery, a second pub, a garage, and even an undertaker.
The women wore pinnies and hats; the men wore jackets and ties.
Everyday life, caught on film.
We often wonder: did those people know they were being preserved for posterity?
Did the baker or the garage owner imagine that less than a century later their businesses would no longer exist?
Photography democratised memory.
For centuries, only the wealthy had their likenesses preserved in portraits, but suddenly anyone could be recorded in black and white.
The result is that we don’t just see the gentry of the past, we see ordinary people like us — busy, proud, hopeful.
Of course, times have moved on.
Digital cameras, and now mobile phones, mean anyone can document everything, for better or worse.
Sometimes it feels like people use their phones more for photographs than for actually talking.
And yes, humour has evolved too.
I suppose that the old joke about whether an entry in the “Village Idiot of the Year” contest was worth submitting would have been circulated following some foolish transgression by an individual.
But once Donald Trump became President of the United States, again, the village elders gave up.
Nobody here could compete with that.
The bar had been set so low it seemed only fair.
Still, looking back at Ipplepen through those photographs is a joy.
A reminder of who people were, who ancestors were, how far we’ve come, and how much the village, like life itself, keeps on changing.
Whether for better or worse if for others to decide.
Leave a comment