This weekend I returned to my home village. The place where I grew up and lived for 47 years. I went to school there and still lived there after I got married. The only changes in my life were when we moved house. With my parents who moved from one end of the village to the other and then from our first house – that we bought as a couple – into a larger one when we had a family. That last house was the best. On the edge of the village, overlooking the fields. No estate being built behind that. There was already the village cemetary and the new crematorium.

I have seen so many changes in the village. But the most significant is its expansion. I remember as a young child in the early 1970s looking out of my bedroom window and seeing the building site swallowing up the fields and regurgitating an estate with red brick boxes of different shapes and sizes. It wasn’t the first estate to be built around the neat and compactly arranged village centre, but it was another big one. And ironic that the last house we lived in before moving away, was one that I had watched being built.

There were already a couple of housing estates that older villagers always called by the name of the of the builders. My Nana always talked about the ‘Jelson’ estate or ‘Allen’s’, when she was retelling a village tale. I never thought of the estates like that because the street names on the older developments were themed, and I always knew where I was in the village by the names. One was an estate of tree names, another Scottish islands. A small development in the late 1960s commemorated (or commiserated) the closing of the railway that went through the village. One of the road names was Beeching’s Close. Dr Beeching being the man who enforced the closure. However, the developments built in the recent years have more obscure and random names. I have not yet worked out where they got the name Borrowcup from.

Since moving away 10 year’s ago, I return a couple of times a year to catch up with friends and family. And the expansion is active once again. In the mid-1980s the local council agreed it that the village would be ‘squared off’ and the gaps of land would be filled by houses so that the village would be rectangular in shape. This was adhered to for about 10 years, and then the planning applications started coming in again. And all of them were granted permission. The familiar landscape around the village has gone. The walks in the fields and along the public footpaths have disappeared under concrete and tarmac. And the couple of miles or so of green belt between the village and the city suburbs is getting thinner and thinner. How long will it be before the village is assimilated into urbanisation?

So, I returned this week, and perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but another development of around 150 houses is now being built. I’ve googled a village map and lo and behold the ‘squaring off’ has failed, which means that now there are plenty of new gaps to be filled in. Googling the population, it has increased from around 4,000 residents in the mid-1970s to over 7,400 residents now. Almost double.

But the sad thing is that the amenities have not increased. 10 years ago, there was a newsagent at each end of the mile long village, and 2 or 3 convenience stores dotted around. Now only one newsagent remains, and a Tesco and Coop store sited at one end of the village. Not very convenient at all. Mind you, if you need a takeaway, there’s plenty of choice and you won’t ever go without a haircut!

Perhaps I’m being sentimental, but the whole atmosphere of the village now feels wrong. When I visit and take the dog out for a walk around the older, familiar streets (and the old village hasn’t physically changed that much), I now feel uncomfortable and out of place. I don’t belong anymore. I meet up with friends and they all ask me if will ever move back and I don’t hesitate with my answer.

Because I now live in a little seaside town with a population of 2,500 people – a third of the number living in my old village – and there is a community there. People supporting each other, acknowledging each other when you pass them in the street rather than putting their heads down and walking on. We have the amenities we need.

So, would I leave that?

Never in a month of Sundays.