My village isn't as superior as many villagers thought.

Callistemon

^I have heard about pampas grass on the front lawn^
Our neighbours have some of that on the front lawn

Just be wary if they invite you in for drinks.......

From what I have heard from a friend who is a police officer, villages like yours are prime positions for cannabis farms as the criminals think that no one will be looking somewhere like your village - how wrong are they ?
I can probably bet that people near the house in question have smelt the cannabis and just written it off as a bonfire or passing traffic smells in ignorance!

If feeling superior makes people feel happy and safe, as long as they don't offend others it really doesn't matter?
We are all ordinary people trying to lead a happy life wherever we live.

A large coastal village I know seems to have alarming rates of drug peddling, suicide, drunkenness. A tiny village in posh Surrey where a relative lived turned out to have a safe house housing a mental patient who entered the house of a neighbouring family and held them up at gunpoint.

I would hate to live in a village that was perfect in every way. One of the attractions of the village I live in are that it contains a cross section of people, all incomes, honest and dishonest. Sadly, even a murder about 25 years ago, just before we moved here. A man took out lots of life policies out on his wife, then killed her and tried to claim on the policies. Her parents still live in the village.

One of the joys of village living is the way all kinds of housing from council through to the most expensive are all cheek by jowl. We live in one of the more expensive houses in our village, with little or no front garden, overlooking the school, next but one to the pub and looking at a terrace of small single story bungalows that used to be farm cottages.

vampirequeen I agree with you.

It reminds me of a weekend course I went on a few years ago when the subject of domestic violence and sexual assault was raised in one of the discussions. One of the women there was outraged and said she hadn't envisaged a weekend discussing this sort of sordid matter, stating "I live in a very nice village and we don't have that sort of thing there". Really?

I was brought up in Scotland’s central belt. When I moved to rural Yorkshire my neighbours seemed to think I’d come from a “war zone” to a “rural idle”. All well and good, except for the local turkey-farm. The farmer had been on crimewatch a few years before pleading for his wife to come home. But “human remains” were found with the turkey entrails!

“It is my belief, Watson, ..... that the lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

Sherlock Holmes knew.

I often wonder how many of them are housing crooks, money launderers, etc., especially when one of the older, lovely but fairly unassuming-looking houses is demolished to make way for a much larger one that frankly looks like an ostentatious WAG-palace

That happens a lot on the estate where I live Witzend.
Several episodes of Vera have been filmed in this part of Northumberland and yes the villains often reside in the poshest houses ?

Sara1954

Callistemon
I think if it’s not nailed down (or cemented down) they’ll have it .

We may have to cement them down.

I say we - I haven't suggested this to DH yet.
I feel a re-think coming on.

I have never heard about having pampas grass on the front lawn.

The cemetery where my late parents are buried has nice grass edging as you drive in and I have always admired the pampas grass that looks so graceful there.
No sign of drug dealers any where there it is always totally quiet.

Callistemon
I think if it’s not nailed down (or cemented down) they’ll have it .

I have heard about pampas grass on the front lawn
Our neighbours have some of that on the front lawn

Sara1954

Callistemon
Well exactly, you can’t do much with the stone tops, the bottoms are cemented in, so it was probably too much trouble to take then.

I'm planning on putting stone tubs in an awkward bit of garden at the front, the theory being they'll be too heavy to lift, but perhaps not!

I think there will be many on here who remember when villages were not for the affluent, or a 'lifestyle choice'. When I was a child, there was local concern about children in village schools getting poor education - now people flock from the towns to go to a 'village school'. I also remember when village properties were cheap, because comfortably-off people preferred to be in towns.
It seems now that people think that if they move to a village they can buy into some imagined lifestyle, but it isn't always so.

As your village is situated not far from the big city that is probably why they chose it. Somewhere out of the ordinary and if the house was detached then not too much strong smells escaping. Possibly people that keep themselves to themselves criminals also like that. I wonder how much cannabis was in there bang goes their profit margin I bet they are not happy bunnies.

We live in a quiet and peaceful village. Quite a few years ago we were asked by the Serious Crimes Unit if they could mount a surveillance from our bedroom window on the house opposite. A few weeks later there was an armed, dawn raid on the property ( which we slept through!) We never found out exactly what the crime was but think it was the import and export of drugs. What better cover than a quiet, prosperous village?

I live in a very quiet village and prefer not to know what my neighbours get up to.
There was a cannabis business in one of the isolated houses. They used the double garage to grow it and there was access down a rarely used track for people to come to buy it.
A friend used to pass the place on her walk and said there was a strange smell.

grew up, and have returned to, a rural area. Most of my working life was spent in a large town with significant deprivation and a lot of crime. Many of my colleagues were born and brought up there, and had a rather skewed view of villages - I would say to them that for really strange behaviour and serious criminals, the countryside is where you find them!
And yes, many cannabis farms are found in rural areas, and they are not harmless small-time stuff. They exploit vulnerable people and feed into big criminal enterprises. Unlike the 'old folk' of my childhood who knew exactly how to prepare magic mushrooms and would never have sold them.

Well, I live in a nice friendly village. Over the last 10 years, without protest, we have accepted roughly three hundred houses or more built mainly behind the houses straggling up one road. We did complain strongly about one estate, but that was because the access to it, each side of the school, was considered dangerous and that the council was now allowing 50 houses to be built where they had refused 16 a couple of years previously because of access problems

The son of a local businessman, whose family have lived in the village for generations, was drawn into crime through his drug addiction and, tragically died of an overdose.
We have had problems with drug dealing in the children's playground and hare coursing in surrounding farmland.

A local farmer whose family have owned land in the village for hundreds of years bought the local pub and then took a bulldozer to it in a drunken rage because the manager he appointed would not let him drink there out of hours when he was blind drunk. He got a couple of hundred hours community service, because he endangered lives as there were people in the pub at the time. He also had to completely reinstate the pub, which was a listed building, to what it was before his visit wtih his 'dozer, with the beady eye of the Conservation Officer visiting every day. It is rumoured to have cost him nearly £100,000 so no further punishment was considered necessary.

Since Lockdown the price of some houses in the village have been nudging £1 million, but these are all old timber frame houses built 300 to 600 years ago. So no modern gin palaces.

In fact a perfectly ordinary village

We live in a pretty village which is rural and isolated like many in France. We have a couple living in the village who are drug dealers as is their son. We have had armed police at their house on a couple of occasions. They are always pleasant when they see us out and about and have invited us for the traditional aperos - early evening drinks. It's difficult as I don't agree with their drug dealing, the rest of the village seem to tolerate them.

I have heard about pampas grass on the front lawn, but not blue vases in the window. What an education!

I was startled to discover, what everyone else already seemed to know, that a large if somewhat run down cottage in the middle of the village was a drug dealers home.
Apparently, if there’s a blue vase in the window, he’s open for business.
The odd thing is , they are a quite ordinary looking couple, probably about my age.

People aren't necessarily botherd with cannabis Nanna8, but it caused a mass fit of the vapours here when the raid on a nice four bedroomed house happened I can tell you! Usual story, every room, plus loft was stacked with plants. Whatever one's views on cannabis, growing it for sale is against the law. I do like living here, the vast majority of people are decent, pleasant people and it is very safe to walk at night, walk on your own, go wherever you please and I realise we are very fortunate. The odd bother about dog poo is a small price to pay for the sense of safety and security.

According to the police it wasn't just a little plant growing on a window sill. They were growing a saleable amount My neighbour is a proper villager (born here) rather than an incomer like me and most others. She knows everyone and has taken on the challenge to find out where the 'farm' is She doesn't like the snobbery that has grown in the village over the years.