Estate village nurses its past

Maer village in west Staffordshire was what's known as an 'estate village' - in other words, the whole place owed its living to the local lord-of-the-manor. You might be a smallholder renting land & house from the manor, or a below-stairs servant - either way, you all deferred to the family living at Maer Hall (which is a vast establishment, and still there).

That sort of arrangement more or less collapsed in this country after the Second World War, but, curiously, at Maer, the feeling of being an estate-village lives on somehow.
For example, in the village hall, a previous member of the local gentry looks down, in this painting, on the activities of the present villagers.

Having the painting still hanging there at all seems vaguely old-fashioned to me, especially in the way it symbolises a much less democratic time.
But maybe Maer people are nostalgic for those times...  Possibly.