#and it happened to some extent on the local cooperative listserve near the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic:

[insteading]

“There's to be a fuel and food drop in the Manor grounds, as the place most easily visible from the air in this snow. And Miss Greythorne is asking if everyone in the village would not like to move into the Manor, for the emergency. It will be crowded, of course, but warm. And comforting, perhaps. And Dr Armstrong will be there—he is already on his way, I believe.” “That's ambitious,” Mr Stanton said reflectively. “Almost feudal, you might say.” Merriman's eyes narrowed slightly. “But with no such intention.”

--Chapter 9, "The Coming of the Cold"

Mr Stanton values self-containment, self-reliance. He admires the decision to make space at the manor for “the people from the cottages,” but insists that the Stanton family home is sufficient to them: “I don't see any good reason for our trooping off to partake of the bounty of the Lady of the Manor.” (Will eventually forces the issue by manipulating the Walker into such an emotional state that he needs a doctor.)

“Cottages” here probably refers to small housing near the manor, often quite old and maybe not fully modernized, that were rented from the landowner. Renters might be manor staff who weren't required to stay in servants' quarters in the manor itself overnight. Or they might be raising livestock or farming land adjacent to the manor, supplying much of what they farmed to the manor itself and some measure of food for their own household. Especially if the housing was supplied as a benefit of the manor-serving job, there was a level of precarity in being a cottager that a householder would not experience: a householder could change jobs without risking the roof over their head.

Mr Stanton's wariness about accepting the invitation to the manor makes sense: the relationship between manor and cottagers was exploitive. At the same time, our beloved “huddling for warmth” trope has so much mileage because humans really do need other humans in times of stress and scarcity. Whatever the virtues of self-reliance, some problems are too big to weather on our own. The first thing we learn to do as babies, before we can walk or talk or feed ourselves, is to cry for help. Because it's fundamentally human to need help sometimes, even if it goes against what we've learned to value.