Enclave

A short story

In former times in England there existed dozens of ‘detached parts’ or enclaves, small areas which, for reasons that might date back to Anglo-Saxon times, were detached from the main bodies of their county and surrounded by another. These enclaves were rationalised away in 1844 by An Act to annex detached parts, all except one, the parish of Solham, which was probably overlooked during the administrative overhaul because nothing occurred there that required administration.

Solham had always been quiet because of its physical situation, surrounded on three sides by a bend in the River Flumen and on the fourth by a road which ran straight to noisier places, a bypass long before such things were thought of. It had always been quiet but since the 1844 act had grown increasingly so, even as its surroundings altered. As a part so detached that it was overlooked by an act to eliminate detached parts, it became an enclave not of its county – which was in any case itself soon annexed by the spreading city – but one out of time and separated from the rest of the world. Not quite literally, but in effect, an island. One by one the families of Solham left, having said yes to some or other opportunity, until finally just one man remained, the last resident of the last enclave in England, the Revd William Braithwaite.