Villages and Towns

Villages and Towns

Physical features of the country make an important part of the people's environment. Man changes it not only by cutting down the forests and draining the marshes to make the land suitable for cultivation but also by building houses in the places where it is convenient to live. The villages and towns make our immediate surrounding which is more important for our happiness than natural environment.

"God made the country, man made the town." This saying reflects the English sentimental feelings about villages — the proper birthplace of human civilization. While it is possible to say when any town or city appeared, the beginning of most villages is obscure. Once upon a time, perhaps, men found that this place was a pleasant spot, with good soil below the hill and above the flood level of the river; or it may have been that here were the crossroads of traders and travellers. Or there were some other reasons for them choosing the particular place to build a village...

There are about 13,000 villages in England. Nearly all of them existed before the Norman Conquest. Some of them are called "street villages" as they have been built along the road, with houses on both sides of it. Some villages are round and are called "green villages" because the houses are clustering around "the village green" — a wide stretch of grass with a well or a pump and a playground. And the third type of village is called "scattered village", as the houses are just "scattered" without any system around a middle meeting point consisting of a crossroads, a shop or two, and a village school perhaps. Usually, there are two focal points in any village: the church with a vicarage (the house of the vicar) and the manor house where the squire lived. He represented government, and particularly the King. Usually the squire was a farmer himself and owned much of the land.

With all sentimental feelings about a village, most Englishmen live in towns. Nowadays less than 10% of English people are classified as "rural" but, as a matter of fact, less than half of them really live in villages.

Much more of them live along the roads between the towns, in the so-called "ribbon developments" — long rows of similar-looking two-storeyed houses stretching out along the road — neither town, nor village.

In urban areas the houses cluster together, forming the districts of reasonably clean and comfort-able for living but similar-looking houses. Some of them stand alone in their own grounds and are called "detached". (If it has only one storey, it is called a bungalow.) Another arrangement is called "semi-detached" ("semi"), when two houses are built back-to-back and some space is left between the pairs. The third type of arrangement is when many houses joined together with no gap between them, a  front room and a back room on each of its two or three floors. In Victorian times this arrangement was called " terraced houses". Nowadays the new houses of this type are usually called simply "town houses". In the 1960s many local town councils began to build blocks of flats to save space in densely populated areas of Britain. But the people did not like the new high buildings and by 1973 the projects had been stopped. The new houses built in most urban and suburban districts are small again. The majority of people live in the so-called "tenements" — large buildings divided into flats. Those who can afford it, move to the "housing estates" where the houses are more expensive and comfortable. After World War II, there appeared in Britain many so-called new towns with modern community centres, broad streets, and well-planned houses, each with a small garden.

To buy a house, a person does not usually need to have all the money to pay for it. There are so-called "building societies" (the house purchasing banks) from which it is possible to borrow up to 90% of the value of the house. A borrower pays back the loan on a monthly basis for about 20 years, after which the house becomes his property. In case of the borrower's inability to pay in time, the house becomes the lender's property. This arrangement is called "mortgage". Local authorities may also give mortgages up to the full value of the house. Usually they are far away from crowded central parts of cities and can be reached only in your own car, as there are no bus-stops or underground stations nearby. That is why the English people can never understand Russian visitors who sometimes proudly say that they live "in the centre of the city". The city centres are not prestigious places to live in. The proper place for living is the suburbs, or "subtopia" (the blend of words "suburb" and "utopia").

Answer the following questions:

1. What is the difference between people's "environment" and "surrounding"? How does man change them both? What is more difficult to change?

2. What does the saying "God made the country, man made the town" mean? Why is village called the birthplace of human civilization?

3. Why is it difficult to say when most villages appeared? Why is it easier to say about most towns? What usually determined the choice of a place to build a village?

4. Into what three groups are the English villages classified? Can this classification be applied to Russian villages too?

5. How are street villages built? What does a green village look like? Where is the focal point of a scattered village?

6. What percentage of English people classified as "rural"? Are only those who really live in the villages meant when we speak about "rural" population? Where do most of rural people live in Britain? What do such places look like?

7. What are the most common types of houses in English towns? And what terms are used to refer to most common arrangements of houses in English towns? In what part of a town is it prestigious to live in England? What is the exact meaning of the word "subtopia"?

8. What are the purposes of building societies? Do these organizations really build houses? What do they do? What condition of buying is called "mortgage"? Do you know its Russian equivalent?