0:00:07 > 0:00:13This vintage Tiger Moth first took to the air in the late 1930s
0:00:13 > 0:00:16and flew out over the wide, flat lands of East Anglia.
0:00:19 > 0:00:2170 years ago,
0:00:21 > 0:00:24this corner of England looked very different.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31Since then, what was once a quiet, rural backwater
0:00:31 > 0:00:34has been transformed... by a farming revolution
0:00:34 > 0:00:38that swapped men for machines...
0:00:40 > 0:00:42...By a transport revolution
0:00:42 > 0:00:45that brought airports and motorways...
0:00:46 > 0:00:49..And by changes in the way we live and work
0:00:49 > 0:00:53that have steadily been covering the land with houses and towns.
0:00:57 > 0:01:02This is a story of change that's common to much of rural Britain,
0:01:02 > 0:01:07but is seen most dramatically here in East Anglia.
0:01:07 > 0:01:10And most clearly from above.
0:01:10 > 0:01:15It is the story of how we have changed and continue to change
0:01:15 > 0:01:17this green and pleasant land.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41It's aviation that's given us a way
0:01:41 > 0:01:45to understand East Anglia's transformation.
0:01:46 > 0:01:51And there's one man who's watched it unfold from the air -
0:01:51 > 0:01:56Bill Ison - at 89, Britain's oldest flying instructor.
0:01:56 > 0:01:57My first flight ever
0:01:57 > 0:02:00was 1931.
0:02:00 > 0:02:04I was wearing my first pair of long trousers.
0:02:04 > 0:02:06And for half a crown,
0:02:06 > 0:02:12this gentleman offered to fly me round in the Gypsy Moth.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17Fascinating. I couldn't believe I was up in the air.
0:02:17 > 0:02:20A lot of green fields.
0:02:20 > 0:02:24Very little in the way of human habitation.
0:02:25 > 0:02:31Cambridgeshire was fairly, um... verdant, shall we say?
0:02:32 > 0:02:33Yes...
0:02:33 > 0:02:35I wouldn't realise at the time
0:02:35 > 0:02:38that things were gonna change as they have over the years.
0:02:40 > 0:02:44In the '30s, hardly anyone bothered to record the landscape from the air
0:02:44 > 0:02:47because there was little reason to believe it would change.
0:02:47 > 0:02:52It took a world war to give us the first comprehensive aerial record.
0:02:56 > 0:02:58Archaeologist Chris Going
0:02:58 > 0:03:02has discovered a unique collection of photographs
0:03:02 > 0:03:05that capture much of East Anglia from the air,
0:03:05 > 0:03:08taken by German bombers on their way to attack RAF bases
0:03:08 > 0:03:11at the start of World War Two.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17What they reveal, effectively by accident,
0:03:17 > 0:03:22is a vast area of the country that has no major city,
0:03:22 > 0:03:25no large industry or anything like an airport,
0:03:25 > 0:03:29no substantial road link to London and beyond.
0:03:30 > 0:03:36In fact, little except small villages and endless farms.
0:03:39 > 0:03:44By starting to take vertical air photographs in the late 1930s -
0:03:44 > 0:03:45'39, '40 -
0:03:45 > 0:03:50the German air force created for us an incomparable archive,
0:03:50 > 0:03:53a huge record of a landscape about to disappear.
0:03:56 > 0:03:59This is a lost world, frozen in time.
0:03:59 > 0:04:03But we can see how it functioned and why it had to change
0:04:03 > 0:04:06thanks to these -
0:04:06 > 0:04:13a unique set of beautifully crafted land-use maps from the early 1930s.
0:04:18 > 0:04:22These are just a few of the original 22,000 sheets,
0:04:22 > 0:04:28each one created by hand by a quarter of a million volunteers.
0:04:28 > 0:04:30Almost all of them were schoolchildren,
0:04:30 > 0:04:33sent into the countryside to record and describe
0:04:33 > 0:04:35every single piece of land in their neighbourhood.
0:04:40 > 0:04:42The entire project was dreamt up
0:04:42 > 0:04:45by geography professor Lawrence Dudley Stamp,
0:04:45 > 0:04:50a man obsessed with protecting Britain's agricultural land
0:04:50 > 0:04:52from urban sprawl.
0:04:55 > 0:04:57And what he created
0:04:57 > 0:05:01was, in effect, Britain's first comprehensive land-use survey
0:05:01 > 0:05:03since the Domesday Book.
0:05:03 > 0:05:05We were mapped by the Ordnance Survey,
0:05:05 > 0:05:07so we knew where things were,
0:05:07 > 0:05:10we knew where the towns, the roads and the railways and the woods were.
0:05:10 > 0:05:13But we didn't know about the white space on the maps,
0:05:13 > 0:05:15which is the bits in-between.
0:05:15 > 0:05:20It was the first time we really had a record
0:05:20 > 0:05:23at this level of detail of what every single field,
0:05:23 > 0:05:26every single parcel of land, was being used for.
0:05:28 > 0:05:33Dr Ruth Swetnam is one of Britain's leading experts on landscape change
0:05:33 > 0:05:35and has been studying Stamp's maps
0:05:35 > 0:05:39to see exactly how East Anglia's land was being farmed
0:05:39 > 0:05:42in the 1930s.
0:05:42 > 0:05:47Looking here at an area around Ely, on the edge of the Fens,
0:05:47 > 0:05:51and we'll put the jigsaw back together.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54of this astonishingly complex landscape.
0:05:54 > 0:05:55It really would have been
0:05:55 > 0:05:58a very much more mixed farming system than we would see today.
0:05:58 > 0:06:04We've got wheat, beet, potatoes, celery, mangolds, lettuces.
0:06:04 > 0:06:06Enormous variety of crops being grown,
0:06:06 > 0:06:09and they were all inter-leaved with each other.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12Very dense, complex pattern of land ownership
0:06:12 > 0:06:14and land use, really.
0:06:14 > 0:06:17The farms were very much smaller.
0:06:17 > 0:06:20They'd have one field here, another field over here.
0:06:20 > 0:06:23To modern eyes, it looks totally inefficient,
0:06:23 > 0:06:25and in many ways, it was.
0:06:25 > 0:06:29The village of Stuntney, in the Fens,
0:06:29 > 0:06:32was a typical 1930s farming community.
0:06:32 > 0:06:34This is the same village today,
0:06:34 > 0:06:38dominated, as it was then, by Stuntney Hall Farm.
0:06:38 > 0:06:43The first recorded owner of the farm was one Oliver Cromwell,
0:06:43 > 0:06:45in the 1640s,
0:06:45 > 0:06:49and by the 1930s, it hadn't really changed that much
0:06:49 > 0:06:51in the way it worked.
0:06:56 > 0:06:58This farm was, um...
0:06:58 > 0:07:02basically worked by vast numbers of people and horses.
0:07:02 > 0:07:07We would have been employing about 100 men and women on this farm.
0:07:10 > 0:07:14Virtually everything was hand work, a lot of what we call "piece work" -
0:07:14 > 0:07:17you get paid by the amount of work that you did.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20And the working day was a hard day.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23There was a lot of ditching work - that was done by hand.
0:07:23 > 0:07:24There was work...
0:07:24 > 0:07:26There was a lot of work.
0:07:30 > 0:07:34Among Chris Going's aerial photos, are a series which show
0:07:34 > 0:07:37quite how much time and effort went into a single harvest.
0:07:39 > 0:07:42The harvest has just taken place. There are three fields here.
0:07:42 > 0:07:46Here we've got, the shocks of wheat have been cut by hand,
0:07:46 > 0:07:49but they haven't yet been gathered into stooks,
0:07:49 > 0:07:52so that happened very recently.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56You cross the road and you can see a large hay cart
0:07:56 > 0:07:57and a horse in front,
0:07:57 > 0:07:59and it's slowly going round the field.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02You can see where they've gathered up all the shocks.
0:08:02 > 0:08:05Half of the field has been done. The other half remains to be done.
0:08:05 > 0:08:08There's another day's work, two days' work, to be done there.
0:08:08 > 0:08:10The landscape you're looking at here
0:08:10 > 0:08:13is a landscape that's being farmed in, effectively, a medieval manner.
0:08:14 > 0:08:18- DR RUTH SWETNAM:- We'd gone through the industrial revolution
0:08:18 > 0:08:21but we hadn't really gone through the modern agricultural revolution
0:08:21 > 0:08:23at that point.
0:08:23 > 0:08:26Farming was not highly mechanised.
0:08:26 > 0:08:28There were very few tractors.
0:08:28 > 0:08:32I mean, in the early '30s, probably about only one in 15 farms
0:08:32 > 0:08:34had any access to a tractor.
0:08:34 > 0:08:36They were very rare.
0:08:36 > 0:08:37In the late 1930s,
0:08:37 > 0:08:41over a million people worked on the land as labourers -
0:08:41 > 0:08:45a fifth of the working population -
0:08:45 > 0:08:47yet farming was so inefficient,
0:08:47 > 0:08:52Britain still imported 90% of its grain, mostly from Canada.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55You have to remember, in 1930,
0:08:55 > 0:08:57that, um, we did still have a huge empire,
0:08:57 > 0:09:01and we were importing a large amount of our food from the empire,
0:09:01 > 0:09:04and there was no incentive at that time
0:09:04 > 0:09:06for farmers to invest in agriculture,
0:09:06 > 0:09:10because, for the United Kingdom, it was cheaper to import food
0:09:10 > 0:09:13from these large bread-basket nations,
0:09:13 > 0:09:19and so the agriculture in the 1930s was really at a very low point.
0:09:19 > 0:09:21And then everything changed.
0:09:21 > 0:09:25When war broke out in 1939,
0:09:25 > 0:09:28Britain suddenly found its essential food supplies
0:09:28 > 0:09:29cut off by German blockade.
0:09:31 > 0:09:35But beyond the propaganda lay a serious issue.
0:09:35 > 0:09:39If we were going to produce food in any new quantity,
0:09:39 > 0:09:41we needed more than allotments -
0:09:41 > 0:09:44we needed to change the nation's agriculture.
0:09:54 > 0:09:59And Stamp's maps showed precisely where to do it.
0:09:59 > 0:10:03The Government weren't really that interested when he first started.
0:10:03 > 0:10:07It was only when they found out that over 5,000 of these field maps
0:10:07 > 0:10:11had been called in by the War Agricultural Executive Committees,
0:10:11 > 0:10:15which were these bodies which were trying to improve agriculture at county level,
0:10:15 > 0:10:18that they suddenly realised how important they were
0:10:18 > 0:10:21and funded the publication of the whole series.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24While in towns and cities one and a half million people
0:10:24 > 0:10:26worked on their allotments,
0:10:26 > 0:10:28out in the countryside,
0:10:28 > 0:10:34over 300,000 unproductive farms were targeted for direct government aid,
0:10:34 > 0:10:38and, effectively, commandeered.
0:10:38 > 0:10:41An additional five and half million acres was identified
0:10:41 > 0:10:43as capable of growing crops.
0:10:43 > 0:10:48200,000 more labourers and 50,000 new tractors
0:10:48 > 0:10:50eased the workload.
0:10:50 > 0:10:52And in five years,
0:10:52 > 0:10:54food production almost doubled.
0:10:57 > 0:10:59Yet while the nation was trying to feed itself,
0:10:59 > 0:11:02there were new demands being placed on the land.
0:11:02 > 0:11:04To fight the war,
0:11:04 > 0:11:08Britain suddenly needed to build airfields.
0:11:11 > 0:11:13Between 1939 and 1945,
0:11:13 > 0:11:17600 new airfields sprang up almost overnight across the UK,
0:11:17 > 0:11:22and the greatest proportion of these were in East Anglia,
0:11:22 > 0:11:26because this was the largest, flattest piece of land
0:11:26 > 0:11:28close to the Continent.
0:11:28 > 0:11:30In 1942 alone,
0:11:30 > 0:11:33a new airfield was being started here every three days.
0:11:35 > 0:11:39Mostly for the newly arrived American air force.
0:11:44 > 0:11:46For three years, they used East Anglia
0:11:46 > 0:11:48as an unsinkable aircraft carrier
0:11:48 > 0:11:51to launch daily raids on the enemy.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57But the cost was extraordinarily high.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00One plane in six was shot down.
0:12:06 > 0:12:09And the ones that survived
0:12:09 > 0:12:12were often so badly damaged, they barely made it home.
0:12:12 > 0:12:13Those that did
0:12:13 > 0:12:16would often be diverted to one airfield in particular
0:12:16 > 0:12:19with an extra-long crash runway.
0:12:19 > 0:12:21It was called Stansted.
0:12:23 > 0:12:26Stansted's mile-and-a-half of concrete became the saviour
0:12:26 > 0:12:29for many thousands of American airmen,
0:12:29 > 0:12:32grateful to be home in, more or less, one piece.
0:12:38 > 0:12:41After the war, dormant airfields littered
0:12:41 > 0:12:44the southern half of Britain and East Anglia in particular.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46The question was,
0:12:46 > 0:12:48what to do with them.
0:12:48 > 0:12:52In the years that followed, some remained in military use.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56Many returned to their original farm owners
0:12:56 > 0:12:59to be ploughed back into farmland.
0:12:59 > 0:13:03But there was another obvious possibility -
0:13:03 > 0:13:06to turn some of these old wartime airfields
0:13:06 > 0:13:09into new peacetime airports.
0:13:11 > 0:13:15Among the candidates, Stansted looked just about perfect.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18With its super-long wartime runway, it was already capable
0:13:18 > 0:13:22of taking the new, large, post-war passenger aircraft.
0:13:25 > 0:13:30And in the first package flight boom of the early '60s,
0:13:30 > 0:13:33Stansted looked set to become London's third airport.
0:13:33 > 0:13:38By 1967, there were plans to expand into the surrounding countryside,
0:13:38 > 0:13:40and the villages and farms
0:13:40 > 0:13:44that would need to be bulldozed were identified,
0:13:44 > 0:13:47but the villagers and the farmers fought back.
0:13:47 > 0:13:50In a rare success for the protesting public,
0:13:50 > 0:13:53the Government unexpectedly changed its mind
0:13:53 > 0:13:57and Stansted was abandoned as London's third airport,
0:13:57 > 0:13:59at least for the time being.
0:14:07 > 0:14:10Meanwhile, East Anglia's farmers were being encouraged
0:14:10 > 0:14:13to do some expanding of their own.
0:14:13 > 0:14:17During the war, this country, and the rest of Europe as well,
0:14:17 > 0:14:19very nearly starved because of the U-boats.
0:14:19 > 0:14:22So immediately after the war,
0:14:22 > 0:14:25all the politicians in Europe, including British politicians,
0:14:25 > 0:14:28went out to farmers and said, "For goodness' sakes, never again
0:14:28 > 0:14:31"are we gonna be dependent on outside sources for food - grow more food!"
0:14:31 > 0:14:33The farmers said to the politicians,
0:14:33 > 0:14:35"Hang on, we're not as dumb as we look.
0:14:35 > 0:14:37"We know perfectly well
0:14:37 > 0:14:39"that if we have a big harvest and produce more food,
0:14:39 > 0:14:41"the price is gonna go down."
0:14:41 > 0:14:42To which the politicians said,
0:14:42 > 0:14:45"Relax, chaps, that will never happen,
0:14:45 > 0:14:48"because if it does, we, the Government, will guarantee
0:14:48 > 0:14:51"to buy those surpluses from you at a price that gives you a profit."
0:14:53 > 0:14:54For the first time ever,
0:14:54 > 0:14:58farmers could afford the cost of mechanisation.
0:15:00 > 0:15:02In the three decades following the war,
0:15:02 > 0:15:05investment in farm machinery rose tenfold.
0:15:09 > 0:15:15And as a result, food production increased by a further 200%.
0:15:16 > 0:15:19But in all this endless industrialisation,
0:15:19 > 0:15:22the land itself had to change.
0:15:25 > 0:15:28To accommodate the fleets of giant machines,
0:15:28 > 0:15:31average field size tripled.
0:15:33 > 0:15:36And to make way for bigger fields,
0:15:36 > 0:15:40more than 12,000 miles of hedgerow were grubbed up.
0:15:43 > 0:15:46And there was also a human cost.
0:15:46 > 0:15:48In the space of a single generation,
0:15:48 > 0:15:52tens of thousands of farming jobs disappeared.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02For this reason, not everyone embraced the revolution.
0:16:02 > 0:16:08On their family farm near Ely, the Morbeys resisted modernisation
0:16:08 > 0:16:11for as long as economics would allow.
0:16:11 > 0:16:15We've had people working on this farm, and their families,
0:16:15 > 0:16:16going back generations.
0:16:16 > 0:16:19The Fretwells, the Murfitts,
0:16:19 > 0:16:21the Veneys, the Ramseys.
0:16:21 > 0:16:23All these names, they're all repeated back.
0:16:23 > 0:16:26If you looked in the school records, you'd find, you know,
0:16:26 > 0:16:28you'd find those family names going back several generations.
0:16:28 > 0:16:32There is a sense of, um... loyalty, if you like.
0:16:34 > 0:16:37It took Anthony Morbey's father until 1967
0:16:37 > 0:16:39to finally bow to economic pressure
0:16:39 > 0:16:43and become one of the last farms in East Anglia to mechanise.
0:16:46 > 0:16:50They still keep 16 horses, but they're only for show.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00And where they once employed an entire village-full of people,
0:17:00 > 0:17:05the Morbeys now have one single full-time employee
0:17:05 > 0:17:09and a few local contractors to work the same 3,000 acres.
0:17:09 > 0:17:11By the early 1980s,
0:17:11 > 0:17:15the old way of life in East Anglia had finally disappeared,
0:17:15 > 0:17:18and not everyone mourned its passing.
0:17:21 > 0:17:24We used to employ, when I was a little boy, 80 farm workers.
0:17:24 > 0:17:25They lived in all of our cottages.
0:17:25 > 0:17:28They didn't have running water, they didn't have indoor toilets,
0:17:28 > 0:17:30they had terrible pay,
0:17:30 > 0:17:32the conditions they worked in were vile -
0:17:32 > 0:17:36dust, cold, hot, outside in all weathers.
0:17:36 > 0:17:41And therefore in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s,
0:17:41 > 0:17:45the one single ambition of anybody who worked in agriculture,
0:17:45 > 0:17:46in the good old days,
0:17:46 > 0:17:48was to get the hell out of agriculture,
0:17:48 > 0:17:50into any job, any factory job,
0:17:50 > 0:17:53because it was preferable to working on farms.
0:17:56 > 0:17:58For 40 years after the war,
0:17:58 > 0:18:02the working countryside of East Anglia effectively emptied.
0:18:04 > 0:18:07Many smallholders simply gave up,
0:18:07 > 0:18:09and their old farmhouses disappeared
0:18:09 > 0:18:11to make way for more grain production.
0:18:13 > 0:18:16Meanwhile, outside in the wider world,
0:18:16 > 0:18:18other forces had been at work,
0:18:18 > 0:18:22bringing new people into East Anglia -
0:18:22 > 0:18:24city people.
0:18:24 > 0:18:28MAN: 'The town was now unhealthy and crowded.'
0:18:32 > 0:18:34After the war,
0:18:34 > 0:18:37the Government had recognised a new threat to the rural landscape -
0:18:37 > 0:18:42the endless urban sprawl from the big cities, especially London.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46'In fact, our town has turned into a monster!'
0:18:49 > 0:18:51The clever solution they came up with
0:18:51 > 0:18:55was to create a green belt around the city
0:18:55 > 0:19:00and then plant brand-new towns in the open farmland outside.
0:19:05 > 0:19:07Flat and sparsely populated,
0:19:07 > 0:19:09East Anglia was the perfect place
0:19:09 > 0:19:12to begin the great post-war rehousing experiment.
0:19:14 > 0:19:18Harlow became East Anglia's flagship new town in the early 1950s,
0:19:18 > 0:19:21taking 80,000 grateful refugees
0:19:21 > 0:19:26from the smoky misery of bombed-out London.
0:19:29 > 0:19:35Peterborough, Stevenage and Basildon were all modelled on the same idea -
0:19:35 > 0:19:39a carefully planned, self-contained community
0:19:39 > 0:19:41with its own industry, infrastructure,
0:19:41 > 0:19:44and above all, the promise of a bright new future.
0:19:44 > 0:19:46MAN: 'A great effort was made
0:19:46 > 0:19:49'to provide prospects as well as present jobs.
0:19:49 > 0:19:52'Provision was made for the individual of moderate means
0:19:52 > 0:19:54'to start on his own from scratch.
0:19:54 > 0:19:57'For the enterprising, the chance was there for him to take.'
0:19:57 > 0:20:01But these new towns were just the start
0:20:01 > 0:20:03of East Anglia's urban invasion.
0:20:08 > 0:20:10Because at the same time,
0:20:10 > 0:20:14another force was growing that would bring even more people -
0:20:14 > 0:20:17the rise and rise of the motor car.
0:20:23 > 0:20:24In the last 60 years,
0:20:24 > 0:20:27the UK has built 60,000 miles of new road network,
0:20:27 > 0:20:32connecting all its major cities and opening up the rural landscape.
0:20:39 > 0:20:41This is the stretch of farmland reaching north
0:20:41 > 0:20:45from London into East Anglia before the war.
0:20:45 > 0:20:47And this is the same stretch today -
0:20:47 > 0:20:51the M11 corridor connecting the region to London and beyond.
0:20:56 > 0:21:00What's clear is that this is not just a road through a wilderness.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05The M11 has become a main artery into East Anglia,
0:21:05 > 0:21:08stimulating development
0:21:08 > 0:21:11and bringing a new, wealthier breed of resident...
0:21:15 > 0:21:16..The commuter.
0:21:17 > 0:21:18When I was a little boy,
0:21:18 > 0:21:22we used to own 80 different cottages in the surrounding villages,
0:21:22 > 0:21:24and if somebody offered you 100 quid for them,
0:21:24 > 0:21:26you were happy to get rid of them,
0:21:26 > 0:21:28because they were a pain in the neck to maintain.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31Today they're lived in by commuters, minimum price £300,000,
0:21:31 > 0:21:35and they all leave in their Rovers and Jaguars at 7.30 in the morning
0:21:35 > 0:21:37to go off to the City of London.
0:21:37 > 0:21:42Of course, all the commuters wanted to live in the same kinds of places,
0:21:42 > 0:21:45East Anglia's nice old villages and market towns.
0:21:45 > 0:21:49And in the last 50 years, many of these have burst their banks
0:21:49 > 0:21:52under the sheer weight of new housing,
0:21:52 > 0:21:57driven by a regional economy which itself is in transformation.
0:22:02 > 0:22:06Nothing shows this more clearly than Stansted Airport.
0:22:13 > 0:22:19Stansted handles 23 million passengers a year,
0:22:19 > 0:22:21a tenth of Britain's total,
0:22:21 > 0:22:24and has now, finally,
0:22:24 > 0:22:27become London's third international airport.
0:22:29 > 0:22:31Having emerged from nothing before the war,
0:22:31 > 0:22:35finally overcoming objections along the way,
0:22:35 > 0:22:39today it occupies a site of more than 3,000 acres
0:22:39 > 0:22:42on what was once prime farmland.
0:22:42 > 0:22:473,000 acres is only the size of a single arable farm,
0:22:47 > 0:22:52and Stansted directly employs 12,000 people -
0:22:52 > 0:22:54rather more than any arable farm ever did.
0:22:54 > 0:22:59Today, there are plans for a new runway and further expansion
0:22:59 > 0:23:02to 35 million passengers a year.
0:23:07 > 0:23:09And as East Anglia's economy grows,
0:23:09 > 0:23:13currently faster than any other region in Britain,
0:23:13 > 0:23:15the pressures on housing grow with it.
0:23:18 > 0:23:22Green belts are now restricting the sprawl of towns and villages.
0:23:23 > 0:23:25So to fit everyone in,
0:23:25 > 0:23:28the planners and developers are returning to an idea
0:23:28 > 0:23:30from 50 years ago -
0:23:30 > 0:23:32the new town.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39This is Cambourne.
0:23:39 > 0:23:43Where ten years ago there was a 1,000-acre farm,
0:23:43 > 0:23:50there are now 3,000 brand-new houses for 6,000 brand-new inhabitants.
0:23:50 > 0:23:51And when the town's finished,
0:23:51 > 0:23:54there'll be roughly half as many again.
0:23:57 > 0:23:59Though Cambourne is a fraction of the size
0:23:59 > 0:24:03of predecessors like Harlow, the intention's just the same -
0:24:03 > 0:24:06to give people a new life in the country.
0:24:06 > 0:24:08MAN: 'And as each house was built,
0:24:08 > 0:24:10'even before all the services were working,
0:24:10 > 0:24:12'the young pioneers moved in
0:24:12 > 0:24:14'to be neighbours to dust and noise.'
0:24:14 > 0:24:17But where 1950's government sold a vision of a new town
0:24:17 > 0:24:19for a brave new world,
0:24:19 > 0:24:22Cambourne is selling something subtly different -
0:24:22 > 0:24:27all the comforts of the modern world in what feels like an old village.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33Cambourne is based on old English settlements,
0:24:33 > 0:24:39and we've taken here, with a blank piece of paper, the, um...
0:24:39 > 0:24:43benefits of the past, all the good things of the past,
0:24:43 > 0:24:49and the benefits of today's planning and lifestyles.
0:24:49 > 0:24:54We're certainly not creating here an urban, town lifestyle.
0:24:54 > 0:24:59It is very much more akin to a rural lifestyle.
0:25:01 > 0:25:05It's the rural lifestyle,
0:25:05 > 0:25:09or at least a modern version of it, that's the magnet for people here,
0:25:09 > 0:25:11and its pull is getting stronger.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17In the next decade,
0:25:17 > 0:25:21half a million more people are expected to move to East Anglia
0:25:21 > 0:25:23in search of the good life,
0:25:23 > 0:25:27which means East Anglia will need a massive increase in housing.
0:25:34 > 0:25:35There are already plans
0:25:35 > 0:25:39for a neighbouring development to Cambourne just a few miles away.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42And along with the houses will come more roads
0:25:42 > 0:25:44to connect them to new industries,
0:25:44 > 0:25:46which will bring in more people in search of work
0:25:46 > 0:25:48who all have to live somewhere.
0:25:50 > 0:25:53DAVID CHARE: You've got to find the right location,
0:25:53 > 0:25:55close to roads and networks,
0:25:55 > 0:25:57and up and down the country,
0:25:57 > 0:25:59there will be other agricultural fields
0:25:59 > 0:26:03where you could sacrifice those for housing.
0:26:03 > 0:26:05The housing has got to go somewhere.
0:26:05 > 0:26:10Today, East Anglia's farmland is under pressure.
0:26:18 > 0:26:19In the course of his career,
0:26:19 > 0:26:23Oliver Walsten has seen the fortunes of Britain's farmers change
0:26:23 > 0:26:24out of all recognition,
0:26:24 > 0:26:28from the intensive heyday in the '60s and '70s,
0:26:28 > 0:26:30when he made big profits from his big fields,
0:26:30 > 0:26:34through the '80s when supply outstripped demand
0:26:34 > 0:26:36and food prices fell,
0:26:36 > 0:26:39to the point where setting aside land for conservation
0:26:39 > 0:26:42paid better than actually growing food.
0:26:43 > 0:26:44For the last 20 years,
0:26:44 > 0:26:47we've been getting poorer and poorer and poorer,
0:26:47 > 0:26:50and for three out of the last five years, this farm's lost money.
0:26:50 > 0:26:52I'm not telling you that cos I want you to cry,
0:26:52 > 0:26:56I'm just telling it to you as a matter of fact.
0:26:56 > 0:26:58Fertiliser doubled,
0:26:58 > 0:26:59cost of my agrochemicals doubled,
0:26:59 > 0:27:02cost of the fuel that goes into the tractor tripled etc.
0:27:02 > 0:27:08Yet just when we might feel tempted to shed a tear for the farmer,
0:27:08 > 0:27:10the situation's changing again.
0:27:10 > 0:27:14This time, it's not a world war, but a world food shortage
0:27:14 > 0:27:18that's making its presence felt across East Anglia.
0:27:18 > 0:27:21But just like the days of "Dig For Victory"
0:27:21 > 0:27:24it promises to breathe new life into farming.
0:27:24 > 0:27:28Now, all of a sudden, things are looking a lot better,
0:27:28 > 0:27:33and this field here is now worth, I don't know, £150 a tonne -
0:27:33 > 0:27:36very nearly double what it was 18 months ago,
0:27:36 > 0:27:40so all of a sudden, wheat farmers like me are happy.
0:27:40 > 0:27:43Underlying fact will remain -
0:27:43 > 0:27:46the world will need more food than it did last year
0:27:46 > 0:27:49and people will still be saying to me, "Grow as much wheat as you can."
0:27:53 > 0:27:57So the competition for East Anglia's land is intensifying,
0:27:57 > 0:27:59and East Anglia is typical
0:27:59 > 0:28:02of the challenges facing the rest of rural Britain,
0:28:02 > 0:28:06in balancing a set of competing and growing demands
0:28:06 > 0:28:08on a very finite piece of land.
0:28:10 > 0:28:13As farming competes with housing,
0:28:13 > 0:28:15with airports and roads,
0:28:15 > 0:28:19and what remains of any natural wilderness.
0:28:23 > 0:28:26It has been a long journey from the '30s,
0:28:26 > 0:28:29when this was a backward, undeveloped corner,
0:28:29 > 0:28:34but now East Anglia is defining how we see the future of our...
0:28:34 > 0:28:36green and pleasant land?
0:28:53 > 0:28:57Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd