Village Change in the Post-Medieval Period
It is easy to assume that village life was stable and unchanging, but this has never been the case. Villages are constantly changing, and this is why many of them have developed complex settlement patterns such as 'polyfocal' or 'composite' villages. Villages change as their communities shrink and grow, and as their relationships with the surrounding land change. These changes can be seen in the morphology or plan of the settlement.
As the name suggests, 'polyfocal' villages have more than one focus, or centre. Most commonly this will be the church/chapel and one other public building or space. It can be difficult to define where the centre of the village is, usually because it has shifted over time. The planned villages of the medieval period were often considered to be the 'heyday' of village Britain, but it is changes after 1600 that have most commonly formed the character that is seen today. It is this change that has often created polyfocal and composite villages.
The term 'polyfocal' was coined in the 1970s by academics who were trying to categorise the various types of village, and this commonly found category covers a multitude of different types of village form. Most polyfocal villages started life with a single focus (often the church), but over time other public spaces have developed. Some villages have two churches, two village greens etc. Others may have three or more foci or 'cells'.
Modern day villages can also be formed from groupings of ancient settlements that have become aggregated over time, hence the term 'composite' villages that are composed of several distinct parts which have become joined by development. Some villages today are actually linked clusters of what were once hamlets or individual farmsteads. Examples of this can be seen at Paston in Norfolk, Rodhuish in Somerset and Carlton in Cumbria. One way of investigating the origins of such communities is to refer back to the Domesday Book from 1086 which contained records for 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time). See http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/
One of the major changes that led to the increased complexity in the form of the British village was the movement away from communal open-field farming (common in medieval times) to the enclosure of land into regular fields which occurred in most of Britain between 1600 and 1800. This had a huge effect on settlements as new patterns of farm holdings developed away from the village centre. In many cases the village structure was weakened as the farming population moved away from the centres of population.
Many villages started to decline, and some disappeared, but with the changes in the 18th and 19th centuries such as the introduction of turnpike roads, canals, and railways, villages often found new focal points. Despite the decline in some villages, the 17th and 18th century also saw massive rebuilding – prompted by a percolation of wealth down to the middle stratum of society. There was much village re-planning and rebuilding, and virtually every settlement in Britain was affected. Sometimes villages disappeared completely, such as West Burton in Nottinghamshire, which had 12 households and a church in 1750, but had disappeared by 1900 due to rent increases in the 19th century.
There were also changes in village plans caused by the fact that medieval lords and their later counterparts had very different ideas about how closely they wanted to live with their tenants. The medieval lord had his manor in the village centre, living 'cheek by jowl' with his fellow men and women. From the 17th century we see increased building of new manors and 'great' houses away from village centres, and in some cases whole villages (such as at Fawsley in Northants or Great Sandon in Staffordshire) were obliterated. Today there is no road to the church at Fawsley, and it sits like an island among the earthworks where its village once stood.
Examples of polyfocal and composite villages:
- Guilden Morden in Cambridgeshire
- Napton on the Hill in Warwickshire
- Moreton Pinkney in Northamptonshire
- Great Bircham in Norfolk
- Padbury in Berkshire
- Martock-Bower Hinton in Somerset
- Marnhull in Dorset
