The Characteristics of Rural Settlements

The first topic I’m going to explore is rural environments. The first aspect of this to discuss, whatever level rural settlement is being studied at, is to look at / revise the characteristics of rural settlements. So this is what I am going to focus this blog post on.

The study of rural settlement, in general, includes:

•          pattern
•          form (or shape)
•          site and situation
•          function and hierarchy
•          change (including quality of life)

Change will be looked into in a later blog.

Pattern

Rural settlements can either follow a dispersed or a nucleated pattern. A dispersed settlement pattern occurs when houses and farms are scattered around the countryside. This is common in parts of mid Wales, where a lot of land is required for farming. When houses and buildings are tightly clustered around a central feature, these settlements are known as nucleated. Joint and co-operative working of the land, defence, shortage of water, swampy conditions and a lack of suitable building materials are all factors which favour nucleation.

Form

Village form refers to shape. This relates to the layout along roads as well as how and why the settlement grew up. There are three types: linear, cross-shaped (cruciform) and village green settlements.

Linear settlements are laid out as below:

The picture above depicts a nucleated linear village. This pattern of buildings are said to suggest the importance of trade and transport during the growth of the village. They are found where poor drainage prevents expansion in a particular direction.

Cross shaped (cruciform) settlements occur at road junctions. The angle of the junction and the amount of infilling will change the exact shape of the settlements. A cross shaped nucleated village can be seen below:

The third form is the village green type of settlement, where dwellings and buildings are clustered around a village green or open space (see below).

Site and Situation

The actual land that a settlement is built on is the site. The situation is the relationship between a settlement and its surrounding area. Important physical factors in site and situation are:

•          availability of water
•          freedom from flooding
•          level sites to build on
•          local timber for construction and fuel
•          sunny, south facing slopes
•          proximity to rich soils for cultivation and lush pasture for grazing
•          potential for trade and commerce, such as close to bridges or weirs, near the confluence sites, heads of estuaries, points of navigation and at an upland gaps

Function and Hierarchy

The number of functions (services) provided by a settlement is strongly linked to the population size of settlements. Dispersed, individual households are at the base of the rural settlement hierarchy; this is followed by hamlets which in general have a local store, post office and pub (low order shops). There is then a sharp increase in facilities offered when you get to a village because there is a much larger population to support. A village would typically have a village store, post office, pubic house, butcher, garage, grocer, hardware store and primary school. A market town is a settlement which offers the same services and facilities as the villages and hamlets, but also has a few more specialised (high order) shops which people travel from other surrounding places to go to. The full hierarchy can be displayed in many different ways, two particularly useful ones are seen below…

The topic in teaching…

The pattern, form, site and situation parts of this topic could lend quite well to map work. For KS3 this could possibly be a matching pairs of definitions of pattern and forms with real life cut outs of villages from maps.  KS4 and KS5 should take this one step further and identify using the map alone the reasons for site and situations of settlements, including using contour lines.

The function and hierarchy of settlements lends itself well to graph work, using real data to re-create the above graph. This also lends itself to comparisons of local areas - the surrounding villages verses the town or city nearby. 

References:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/urban_environments/settlement_characteristics_rev4.shtml

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/settlement_wales/eng/Dispersedsettle/

Nagle, G, 2001. Advanced Geography. Oxford University Press.