The countryside is a central feature in national symbolism and rural images often serve as signs of the Englishness. Social scientists set out to question and to challenge the symbolic naturalization of the social order. Who are the groups that produce such images? What interest do they have in disseminating such representations? Under what conditions is this symbolic work effective? A whole series of academic studies in the UK highlights the dual construction of a legitimate national and rural order, a dual ideological construction that is both a bone of contention and the source of forms of domination. In reviewing studies of the rural aspects of national identification in England, this paper looks to emphasize in what way rural studies contribute to a critical analysis of Englishness. The paper is largely based on research since the early 1990s into deconstructing the dominant perception that combines countryside and Englishness by emphasizing the phenomena of exclusion it involves and particularly the distancing of ethnic minorities and the working class.