My dad is one of 11 siblings who survived to adulthood and had
children (14 in all, 3 died before 1 yo). One brother had 2 kids, the
rest had between 6-10 children each. I am one of 8. My grandfather was
also one of 10+ (can't remember exactly). Catholic farmers.... I have
lost count of the next generation. My parents already have 25
grandkids.

ah, the catholic explains it, none of my family as far as I know have
been catholic, most recorded their religion as Baptist or Methodist on
the documents I've seen, I suspect shorter families became the trend
sooner amongst non catholics. 3 out of my 4 grandparents (born 20s and
30s) are from longer families, though not as impressive as yours, and I
believe the one that was one of 2, the parents were trying to have more
with various outcomes, they then had there own children in the 50s and
the family lengths suddenly dropped to 2 and other branches had
similarly "short" families. As my aunt's husband sadly died after 14mths
of marriage, my paternal grandparents have 2 grandchildren and maternal
grandparents have 4. My 2 children are the only ones in their generation
in all directions, so they have 5 great grandparents and all 4
grandparents that they are very precious to.

My siblings and I are scattered, but my dad is the only one of his
siblings ot move away, and most of my cousins stayed close to home, so
there are about 50 cousins who live within 60 miles or so, almost all
of whom have kids and spouses (age range is 35-60).

We're all over the place these days, which is rather strange as we were
actually bizarrely homogenous before - with no birth that we can find of
any ancestor either direction being outside of England, not even Wales
or Scotland, I've mucked that up for my kids as DH is Scottish, but of
course, we now live in the US, my grandparents live in Cyprus, my sister
is moving to the Channel Islands shortly, my parents are in the
process of buying a property in Austria, so my relatives are moving
further away not closer!

Even when we lived in England we all lived different places, I joined
facebook recently and have found several of my school friends, I'm
surprised quite how many still live in the same town we went to school
in - being close to family must seem quite normal and natural if people
gravitate homewards like that (many went away for university or a bit
longer).

Cheers
Anne