Motoring and the British Countryside

The representation of the car in the countryside was central to selling the benefits of motoring and owning a car in the interwar period. Motor traffic was a key part of the debate and legislation on the countryside, in the context of land for building and food production, and scenery for pleasure and reassurance of what it meant to be English. This essay focuses on the impact of the motor car as it generated a new economy for rural Britain with new services, buildings and roads that changed the landscape and made the countryside more accessible. It shows how the motoring press and advertising campaigns exploited an imagined ʹBeautiful Britainʹ and brought about a modernisation that set in place aspects of the use, values and culture of the British countryside that have remained to the present.