Introduction

Reflecting global demographic trends, the older population in rural areas of the UK is growing faster than its urban counterpart and has a higher median age – a phenomenon that is projected to continue and intensify over the next 25 years (Champion and Shepherd, 2006). Despite this situation, to date the circumstances and experiences of older people in the countryside have received significantly less attention by researchers compared with those of urban elders. As with urban areas, the impact of population ageing in rural locations has been predominantly framed in terms of the envisaged burden of increasing numbers of older adults on service systems. Previous studies of rural ageing in the UK have therefore tended to adopt a problem-focused approach emphasising the disadvantages that affect older rural residents’ wellbeing and participation in community life. Less is known about the ways in which older people are connected to rural society through their voluntary and other civic and social activities, and how the positive contributions they make to the social fabric of these communities can be maintained and promoted (Le Mesurier, 2006). This information is crucial to both enhancing older rural residents’ quality of life and the sustainability of rural communities through a better understanding of the experiences of, and conditions and needed supports for, societal engagement in later life (Brooks, 2011).

The interdependence of older people and their communities in creating a sustainable countryside has been highlighted by gerontologists worldwide for more than a decade (see for example, Joseph and Chalmers, 1998). One of the key issues underlined in the expert group report that informed the First International Conference on Rural Aging in 2000 (West Virginia University Center on Aging, 1999, p i) was stated as follows: ‘Rural elders can contribute. With effective planning and policy development allowing communities to tap the resources of older citizens, rural elders will be perceived as contributors to society and not simply consumers of services’ (emphasis in original). As Wiersma and Koster (2013) point out, however, although civic participation is often seen as central to active ageing, rural communities’ ability to encourage and support the contributions of their older members is dependent on economic, social and other structural conditions, many of which are in flux in contemporary rural settings.