Thanks for the link Les

While I like Kate Rusby's take on this somg I love the Kinks original and whichever version have to agree with the opinion that

'Ray Davies' sentimental, nostalgic streak is never better expressed than in The Village Green Preservation Society.'

From one review of the Kink's album

'As the opening title song says, the Kinks — meaning Ray himself, in this case — were for preserving "draught beer and virginity," and throughout the rest of the album, he creates a series of stories, sketches, and characters about a picturesque England THAT NEVER REALLY WAS'

'The 'rural myth' in the minds of some people …….

'has taken on an idealised and stereotyped form, consisting mainly of images of thatched cottages with roses round the door, the sun always shining, birds trilling in the treetops, and everyone happy and healthy.

But of course it very often wasn't like that at all.

The thatched cottages were usually intolerable slums when the poor inhabited them, and were only made liveable when the rich discovered the charm of a simple rustic habitation as an escape from the industrial urban environment.

The living conditions were frequently cold and damp, so that disease abounded, and many farm workers were cruelly treated by the farmers they worked for and were undernourished (a very good description of which can be found in the chapter entitled "To Be a Farmer's Boy?" in Ronald Blythe's masterwork on rural life in East Anglia, Akenfield.)'

Albion Magazine Online