Planned & Estate Villages
Evidence of village planning goes back to the Romans and was also seen during the Norman Conquest, but most villages that we refer to today as 'planned' were created in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. These are self-conscious places that are deliberately designed to be villages, and tend to be well thought-out and serviced by communal spaces and buildings that reflect the needs of the communities that they were designed for.
Victorian observers categorised villages according to whether they considered them 'open' (when many residents owned their homes) or 'closed' when the majority of property was in the hands of just a couple of individuals. Estate villages were the most 'closed' of all rural communities.
When you consider that approximately a quarter of the land mass in England during the 19th century was part of a large private country estate (there were 363 great estates of over 10, 000 acres each, as well as many smaller estates), it isn't surprising that 'estate villages' were built. For the wealthy land owners that built them, estate villages became an expression of an idealised rural life – they were villages designed to look and feel particularly 'villagey'.
The gentry wanted to see their tenants living 'honest' rural lives, in attractive cottages that reminded the passer-by of the 'olde England' (sometimes even when the estates were built in Wales, Ireland and Scotland). Thus estate villages were designed as the antithesis of the industrialised urban world. Think of the romantic country scenes painted by the artist Constable, and you have an image of the idyllic world the gentry were trying to recreate.
Decorative barge boards were added to steep gables on prettified cottages, fancy brick chimneys were positioned in prominent locations, leaded light casement windows were installed, and social status amongst the tenants would be reflected in the size and detailing of their dwellings. Often the estate would paint all the cottages in the same estate colour – a practice still maintained by the National Trust to this day.
Planned and estate villages were not simply toys for the rich, they were working environments designed to bring in profits and to effectively manage large estates. The fancy architectural detailing seen on the exterior of model houses is rarely continued to the inside, as interiors weren't seen by the wealthy on their carriage drives about the estate.
It was fashionable to be seen to care for the poor, so a 'model' estate village was both an effective way of managing the estate workers and tenants, as well as providing a showpiece to reflect the 'civility' of the landed family. Showing off the estate village to visiting guests would be an essential part of their carriage drives.
In some cases the 'improvement' of estate cottages wasn't to the benefit of the tenants – for example some landlords removed thatched roofs (seen as a reflection of poverty) with 'modern' slates, but tenants later complained that their cottages were colder in winter having lost their straw insulation. In the most remarkable cases existing villages were entirely remodelled – such as Shoreside on Orkney that was half demolished by Thomas Balfour to improve his view from Balfour Castle. He then turned the remains of the village into a formalised estate village.
It wasn't just wealthy landowners who were building planned villages. Moravian missionaries established several new village settlements in the second half of the 18th century. These tended to be built on a square plan in a traditional 18th century urban style with neo-classical architecture. One of the best preserved examples is Fulneck in Yorkshire.
Under the category of planned villages we should also consider the Garden Village Movement of the early 20th century. Established as a way of providing good housing among good services for all classes, Garden Villages followed the same lines as the larger Garden Cities of Welwyn and Letchworth. The difference between Garden Villages and Cities was usually that the 'cities' were designed to have workplaces integrated, whereas the smaller villages tended to be more like well-designed suburban estates with good communal facilities. These estates were a reaction against urbanism, and were designed to look and feel like a village, with parks, village greens and housing heavily influenced by neo-vernacular styles and the Arts and Crafts movement. They remain pleasant places to live to this day, and good examples remain at Rhiwbina and Barry in South Wales.
An interesting modern echo of the ideals of the Garden Village movement is the village of Poundbury in Dorset, designed for the Prince of Wales by architect Leon Krier. This new village is built of neo-vernacular and historical reproduction buildings, and has been carefully designed to provide places of employment and domestic buildings in close proximity, and with everything designed to look traditional and natural. There may be a touch of Disney about its artificial historicism, but residents report that the architecture and planning has made it a vibrant and friendly place to live. The philosophy behind Poundbury is that rather than extending existing villages with new houses, new communities should be built that are self contained and sustainable.
Examples of planned and estate villages:
- Ardington and Lockinge in Berkshire
- Pumpsaint in Carmarthenshire
- Warter in East Yorkshire
- Lowther in Cumbria
- Wilton in Cleveland
- Southill in Bedfordshire
- Balfour on Orkney
- Loughgall in County Armagh
- Fulneck in Yorkshire
