Talk:List of the largest villages in England

message: Who exacly claims that Studley is the second largest village in England?. 
I can tell you for a fact that it isnt even the second largest village in Warwickshire, both Polesworth and Bulkington are larger. G-Man 20:45, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

message: See it's wikipedia article (Methley) Gigitrix (talk) 20:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Methley?

message: Interestingly, the article on Wombourne claims that it is "officially the largest village in England". it's not even mentioned on this page. So, is it the largest or not? One of the pages must be wrong! Grutness...wha? 06:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So be bold! I'm surprised to see you of all people holding back! :) Put it on the list. And if you read the article, you'll see that they are probably all wrong. Or all right. And that it dosn't matter anyway.  Naturenet | Talk 09:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Wombourne

message: The definition of what constitutes a village may be in dispute in the UK, but not what constitutes a town - Wendover in Buckinghamshire has had a town charter since 1464 and still holds it; it is therefore not a village and hasn't been for over 500 years.  It has been removed from the article. -- Francs2000  02:25, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wendover doesn't have a town council though.  And really the definition of 'town' is as muddled as 'village', but by the legal definition of town (which is a parish that calls itself a town), it ain't one.  Of course, that's a stupid definition, also.  But I think this claim ought to be reinserted.  Morwen - Talk 13:57, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you sure that's the legal definition?  Aylesbury didn't have a town council until very recently and it's been the county town of Buckinghamshire since the mid 16th century.  My understanding is that the legal definition of a town in the UK is that it should have a town charter or charter of incorporation; this is what the Towns of the United Kingdom article says is the official definition, and Wendover certainly does have a charter. -- Francs2000  15:47, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd argue that if it doesn't have a mayor right now, then it isn't a legal town, despite the fact that it may have been one once.  It doesn't necessarily have to have a parish council - could have Charter Trustees instead - a concept that was set up solely in order to keep places as towns!    Compare the situation with Rochester, which isn't a city because it doesn't have a mayor.  City and town are different levels of honorifics, but fundamentally they have the same origin and kind (honours granted on settlements by the king).  I'm not saying this isn't a stupid definition, and I'm not saying we should use it.  But I don't like your definition either, as it leads to lots of parliamentary boroughs that are today considered villages, being considered towns, too.  Old Sarum is not a town. :p Morwen - Talk 19:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would like to say for the record that I think the mayor definition is a bit silly as that would mean that a number of places that are considered to be historic market towns in this area are not towns any more, and I'll leave it up to you to inform the local residents.  I live in a town (Aylesbury) and we identify with the town charter and celebrate it every year; local places like Wendover and Winslow are considered by most locals to be towns and while they don't have mayors they do have charters.  In my experience the people who tend to think of Wendover as a village tend to be the newcomers who move there because it's so picturesque and identify with the village idea because it fits with their rose-tinted view of the countryside</POV>.  Right, rant over, let's just agree to disagree. -- Francs2000  21:44, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wendover]]

message: Ideally we need estimates all from the same source.  Combining estimates from different sources is bad.  Morwen - Talk 13:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely - I should have put in a health warning.  Probably the 2001 census would be the best source - is there information available for each of these "villages" yet? Warofdreams talk 13:48, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Population

message: Until just now, the Fordwich article claimed that Fordwich is the smallest town in England.  I've altered that to non-specific "is said to be".   Googling, I find other claimants to be Manningtree, Winchelsea, Axbridge, Bishop's Castle, although it is unclear how many places make this claim on an official basis.  Now, the issues above regarding the definition of 'town' make this tricky.  Fordwich currently has a town council and used to be a borough, so has a good claim.  Morwen - Talk 23:08, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I will categorically state now that I have no idea where the smallest town in the UK is.  I'm probably sitting on it for all I know.  ;-p -- Francs2000  23:36, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My vote is Old Sarum! :) Morwen - Talk 08:28, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I did quite a bit of checking when I originally added that note to the Fordwich article.  Fordwich is almost certainly the smallest place with a town council in England (or Wales) and seems to be the smallest town to claim to be the smallest town in England.  Of course, this question is complicated by the lack of a good definition of "town".  The smallest town ever could be Gatton - it only had seven voters to Old Sarum's ten! (reference: Unreformed House of Commons) Warofdreams talk 10:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: K.  Have reverted self.  Morwen - Talk 11:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Smallest town in England"

message: And I am reminded of the claim made in Ault Hucknall that it is the "smallest village in England"!  Morwen - Talk 12:35, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Define "village" <vbg> -- Francs2000  23:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope that if you've read the article you'll see that one cannot do so in this context. Naturenet | Talk 08:47, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Smallest village"

message: Don't know if it's ever claimed the title but Bessacarr, just south-east of Doncaster, has a high population.  The census counts it as a village, so it must be one of the largest.  I expect that its population are too busy enjoying their private swimming pools to bother with something as parochial as this. :)  Epa101 13:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bessacarr

message: When has Horsforth ever made claim to be a village?  It has a town council, and everyone always refers to it as a town.
:Why was it put back on?  I threaten to take it off again unless someone explains why it's on here.  Legally, it is a town, and most West Yorkshire people seem to call it a town.  Epa101 19:29, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Horsforth

message: Has an urban character though no town council. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.105.237.181 (talk) 20:13, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Street (Som)

message: Ewell has always been called "a village" for as long as I can remember it, yet has a population of 39,994 - nearly 13,000 larger than Epsom, despite the latter being the "town" in Epsom and Ewell. WOuld it qualify? Timrollpickering 14:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is it Ewell? 

message: I had seen a small video clip on probably Channel Four or some commonly available channel in UK. It mentioned that there was a smallest village called "Ireland" in England. That village had only three houses and a pub. I tried to obtain more details about this village, but could not get any inputs. The video clip was shown on TV in 2001.
If anyone gets more inputs regarding this small villgae, please let me know on [e-mail address removed]
Thanks in advance,
Sagar Paradkar
:I've removed your e-mail address, as leaving it here can lead to you getting spam.  I suspect that your are after the village of Ireland, Bedfordshire, although we have very little information on it. Warofdreams talk 23:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: The smallest village called "Ireland" in England 

message: This article badly needs some, and is currently of very little use to this encyclopedia.  Yes there are 14 references, but EVERY claim on this page needs to be referenced, or it should be deleted.  It doesn't need to be a claim that is proven to be true (as there clearly can't be 30 smallest villages), it just needs to reference that someone of reasonable authority has made that claim.  Some of this page appears to be own research (eg largest towns without railway stations). Halsteadk (talk) 12:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  References / Own Research 

message: Kingsteignton is now a town (January 1, 2009) so I removed it from the list and added it as a kind of footnote at the end. The flying pasty (talk) 16:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update Kingsteignton 

message: Armthorpe in South Yorkshire 2001 census population of 12,630 http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/viewFullDataset.do?instanceSelection=03070&productId=779&$ph=60_61&datasetInstanceId=3070&startColumn=1&numberOfColumns=8&containerAreaId=790254  
Surely this should be added to the list?  78.105.243.21 (talk) 18:49, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have a source referring to it as the largest village in England?  If so, then, it has grounds for inclusion, otherwise not. Warofdreams talk 18:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  It doesn't need to claim it, the fact it is a village and the verifiable population figures ought to be enough 78.105.243.21 (talk) 19:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is all about claims which have been made and the difficulty of defining the term.  There are plenty of settlements larger than Armthorpe which are not towns, so it's not got any strong claim to the title, but if someone had claimed it was, there might be grounds for including it. Warofdreams talk 19:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: So, in the best wikipedia tradition, all it really needs is some 'independent' two bit website and bob is your mothers brother. 78.105.243.21 (talk) 20:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm trying to be encouraging here, and clearly any source would be better than no source, but either a reliable source, or one connected with the parish, would be good. Warofdreams talk 21:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Armthorpe 

message: Sources not only need to back up the population or area or other appropriate figure, but they need to back up that a claim has been made. I have removed 3 entries which either had irrelevant references or that didn't mention any claim. Re Nazeing, my edit summary implies I was looking at population but its "claim" was based on area - however the deletion stands as there is no mention of any claim that it's the largest under any criteria. Feel free to add these back in if their claim can be supported properly. Halsteadk (talk) 17:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrelevant sources 

message: The problem with this article is that the sources usually discuss the concept in the context of a particular place and so we lack a good basis for the overall structure.  So, we should consider what might be a better context for this information.  The current title focuses upon the superlative but what of the general mass of English villages?  Might this be a better basis for an article?
First, we should consider the notability of the topic.  We soon find that there are hundreds of books  devoted to the topic:  English village, English villages.  These seem ample for our needs.
Second, we should consider whether we have an article about this already.  English village and English villages are both blue links but one is a redirect to the other and you'll be surprised to find what we have there.  This is not what our readership expects under that title, I fancy.
So, what say we think big and construct an article about English villages in general?  We can push the existing content aside and then start to build.  The article we have here might form a reasonable section within this general article as it would fit well alongside general discussion of village size and status for which our sources should supply good material.
Colonel Warden (talk) 21:05, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: We have a few paragraphs at Village#United Kingdom.  The redirect Villages in England also exists, and goes to yet another article. Warofdreams talk 21:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Another direction 

message: Whilst as the article mentions, it is difficult to define precisely what a village is, I wonder what the largest village in England is that:
(a) is not classified by the post office as a post town
(b) has a parish council rather than a town council
(c) is not conjoined to, or in close proximity to, a larger urban area
JOhn  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.8.174.136 (talk) 10:23, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: (c) is the one which is very hard to judge.  Out of the villages named in the article, Wombourne is the largest which meets the other two criteria so, if you agree it is sufficiently far from the West Midlands conurbation, it might be the answer to your question.  Then again, Rossington is larger, and Bessacarr larger still - but they are quite close to Doncaster.  As the article suggests, there's no definitive "largest village". Warofdreams talk 14:10, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

text: 212.8.174.136, the article says nothing about it because this isn't a real topic. It's an editor collected pile of low-if-not-non existent reliability of sources, which are here because they simply mention the phrase and came up in a Google search, and nothing else. It contains no sources at all, let alone of any reliability, discussing anything close to 'what's the largest village in England', or even 'look how difficult it is to define the largest village in England'. Hell, you won't even find this basic list in a reputable source, except of course mirrors of Wikipedia. Anything else you read in this article comes from nowhere but other editors personal opinions. As such, if you have a personal opinion of your own on which village meets your a,b,c, criteria, you can pretty much add it. Trust me when I say you wouldn't be degrading the quality of this article one single bit if you did. Not now, nor even ten years into the future by the looks of it. Even though no original research and verifiability are two of our core content policies. MickMacNee (talk) 16:18, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: As I've said before, you're welcome to nominate the article for deletion if you don't think it has a place in Wikipedia.  An annual complaint on the talk page won't achieve anything. Warofdreams talk 16:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You know full well that's been tried twice before and you know full well that this article was kept despite the fact nobody offered a single decent argument to retain it in its current form that wasn't complete and utter rubbish, variations of ILIKEIT or USEFUL or INTERESTING or NOHARM of VAGUEWAVE, or worse, straight up lies about what sources do and don't say about this topic, and indeed, whether they were even reliable. You were the worst offender on that score. You stated there were plenty of hits in Google Books discussing the 'notable' topic. So where are they then? Why aren't they in the article two years later? Why are you completely and utterly unwilling to accept as basic fact that this article's references section is a list of Google results for the term, barely any of which could even be called a reliable source, and nothing else? When are you ever going to give a policy backed and cogent argument that this is what makes this a valid article on Wikipedia? When are you going to face up to the reality that you have never ever even attempted to defend this article using the actual truth of what it is and what it contains. This non-reply was just the latest example of that, others are above. Infact, if you go look, most of the keep votes weren't defending this article at all, they all pointed out that it is complete wrongness in its current form, and should probably be rewritten into an article about villages using, y'know, some sources, or saying it should be properly recast as what it is - a list of claims connected by nothing at all in the sources except the phrase - even the closing admin stated that case for renaming in one of them. You can see by its continued existance in this state, with the only activity being you holding OR seminars on the talk page, that all of those comments and the Afds were a complete and utter waste of time. For a laugh, I just might nominate it for Good Article status, and see if you accept the inevitable 100% negative feedback it would so surely recieve. Or I might just start removing all the unsourced content, which policy entitles me to do. I shall of course leave all the 'sourced' content (basically the table of google results), although as I'm not willing to see readers be deceived into believing this is an actual proper Wikipedia list, per policy I'd also include full explanations as to what they do actually say, and from what position of authority and neutrality (mostly none) that they say it. If you do actually have any reliable, secondary sources to support this as a topic, I suggest you go find them and add what they say about it. Because I really don't think you're going to like what comes out of that improvement process, and I'm certainly not going to stand for being messed around if people try to revert me without justification. The reality is, if you did object and were asked to explain how my edits are wrong or against policy, you wouldn't really have a leg to stand on. MickMacNee (talk) 19:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You keep saying the same things, verging now toward personal attacks, and don't address any points anyone else has made.  I'll leave this be until you either make some constructive suggestions for improving the article, or if (as you claim) that is not possible, you nominate it for deletion. Warofdreams talk 14:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Your only point was, 'why not nominate it for deletion?' And I am pretty sure I answered that above. If you had any other point, it's not clear to me. You can wait if you want, resting on yet another non-reply, but I won't be simply making suggestions, I'll simply act as I've outlined above. I've no intention of engaging in further fruitless and obstructive non-discussion here. I've given you the reading material you will require if you intend to get in my way. MickMacNee (talk) 18:18, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: So long as you act in a collaborative manner and request citations for material before removing it, that would be a big improvement. Warofdreams talk 13:03, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole article has been tagged for lacking citations since August 2008. The lack of any sources at all, let alone reliable independent secondary citations, to support the actual topic of the article such as it is discussed in text (i.e. not simply the idea that single mentions of the title can be found in Google results) has been raised in the 2 previous Afd's also, both held in 2009. It's now March 2011. I'd say that's a sufficient amount of requesting to show good faith in a collaborative environment. You are the person who clearly stated at Afd that such references exist. Rather than being in the spirit of collaboration, this request for further notice from you can now be reasonably interpreted as an attempt to stall the process of actual article improvement by stopping others removing material that on current evidence, will never be cited. Per policy, the burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. MickMacNee (talk) 14:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Query

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on List of the largest villages in England. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080513082012/http://www.forelands.demon.co.uk/About.html to http://www.forelands.demon.co.uk/About.html#Bembridge
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 00:07, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on List of the largest villages in England. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070127190215/http://www.statistics.gov.uk:80/pbc/review_areas/downloads/AC_Report_Humberside.doc to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pbc/review_areas/downloads/AC_Report_Humberside.doc
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070501150826/http://lancingvillage.co.uk:80/village.htm to http://lancingvillage.co.uk/village.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:28, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Churchdown also claims this title. And actually, with 11,000 inh. it should also beeing listed, shouldn#t it ?Flk-Brdrf (talk) 18:08, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Churchdown]] 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on List of the largest villages in England. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070501150826/http://lancingvillage.co.uk/village.htm to http://lancingvillage.co.uk/village.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090705125716/http://www.touruk.co.uk/staffordshire/Wombourne.htm to http://www.touruk.co.uk/staffordshire/Wombourne.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150923182602/http://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/content/page/21970/Overton,%20Laverstoke%20and%20Steventon%20Ward%20Profile.pdf to http://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/content/page/21970/Overton,%20Laverstoke%20and%20Steventon%20Ward%20Profile.pdf
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.forelands.demon.co.uk/About.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 13:19, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on List of the largest villages in England. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140309154028/https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rural-urban-definition to https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rural-urban-definition
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: "The old simple definitions of 'towns' were settlements with:
    town charters (see the list of towns in England); or
    with a regular market.
These two features have been long surpassed by large 'new towns' on former villages such as Harlow which have neither feature yet have virtually no claims that they are villages"
...only Harlow has both - Harlow market and appears to have originally been chartered in 1445... https://archives.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/essex.html#H , so is a bad example Aboodoo (talk) 23:15, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Harlow