The English Village Green

While Italian borghi have their main “piazza” or square, old English villages had, and often still do have, a “village green”.   Traditionally the village green was a space of land where local animal owners could allow their sheep or cows to graze, or a place where local parties and festivals were held. On Mayday for example a maypole would be set up on the green and the villagers would celebrate by choosing a May Queen and Morris Dancing.  

Morris Dancing is old English folk dancing and is still practised today by some enthusiasts.  (See a couple of examples here and here).  Many of the old village greens also had a pond.   The village greens of the middle ages also had “stocks”, (read about Stocks and see a picture here) where wrongdoers were held in wooden structures and the local people would throw things like rotten vegetables at them to punish them for their crime.  Some of these old stocks can still be found, even in London today. Village greens can be found all over the UK and are still used to celebrate local festivals or fun, such as summer fetes, where the locals set up stalls selling home made produce and games usually to raise money for good causes.  Many are well known and very picturesque as you can see in the pictures on this link.

Like the old borghi, the village roads tend to be narrow and picturesque, while magnificent old houses sometimes surround the village green itself.  Here is an example of one beautiful old place with a “thatched roof”.  

Have a look here to see some truly wonderful examples of thatched cottages around the UK if you are interested.  There used to be many more in the countryside, but they are a terrible fire risk, and so very expensive to insure. Nowadays many thatched cottage roofs are being replaced with tiles L  

This village along with its thatched cottage on the green also still has a traditional telephone box,

but that doesn’t date back so far J

An old English graveyard

On one really lovely autumn afternoon we went for a bus ride into the little town of Lymington, which is between the south coast towns of Southampton and Bournemouth.   Lymington is a very pretty place with its own quay and is world famous as a sailing resort.  The town has been there for centuries, and some parts, including the parish church of St Thomas,

St. Thomas

go back as far as the 13^th century. Passing by the church I was reminded how Italian visitors who accompanied us on a visit to Lymington many years ago were fascinated by the churchyard, and so I thought I would write a little about it here in case any Italian readers of this blog might be interested too. The reason for our guests’ fascination was because in Rome, church graveyards (such as we know them in the UK), are few and far between.   Due to lack of space, the deceased are interred above ground one above the other (or so Vito tells me – I’ve never seen them myself).  Historically of course the Romans were buried underground one under the other in layers for centuries, which is why the catacombs as they are known now lie under the whole of modern Rome, and also why the Rome metro system is so small compared to other cities.  It’s because every time they plan a new line or some more stops, they come across another archaeological  (i.e. protected) site!

By contrast in the UK, many church or communal graveyards are very old and very beautiful and many have even become havens for wildlife.

The churchyard at St Thomas is very old, so old in fact that many of the inscriptions on the headstones have been worn away by the weather

Headstones worn away by the weather

over centuries making them impossible to read while others have slipped in the earth slightly giving them a slightly higgledy-piggledy appearance.  All this lends to its charm and the graveyard is not only very beautiful but also a very tranquil place to be. 

Higgledy-piggledy charm

On the day we were there, the leafy trees were just beginning to turn into their autumn finery and the whole area was dappled

Dappled with sunlight

with sunlight.  We spent quite a while walking through, looking at the graves to see if we could see how old they were, and enjoying the unusually warm sun for that time of year.  The church itself

Inside the church

was also very pretty although has undergone several renovations in its long life. 

If you want to read more about Lymington (a very popular holiday spot in South England as there is lots to see all around the area) you can find information here.

Keeping you posted.

I began this blog as “Letters from Rome”, following on from the original collection, but as I'm in the UK at the moment, I decided to send you some letters from there instead.  It was the idea of posting letters that made me wonder whether people outside the UK know about our postboxes, which are known as pillar boxes.  Of course they are red and quite iconic, or at least I believe they are, although perhaps not so much as our old phone boxes J  However I wonder how many travellers to the UK have ever noticed the front of our pillar boxes, or if they have, ever been curious as to what the letters so carefully inscribed on the front of each stand for.  Can you see on the front of this double pillar box?  It is a rare double box, one that is more usually found outside a post office as indeed this one is.

 The letters ER stand for Elizabeth Regina, and every pillar box made in the reign of Queen Elizabeth will have those letters adorning the front.  However post boxes made during the reign of different king or queen will have their initials on the box instead, and in the case where there are several kings with the same name, the “number” of the king will be given too.  So in the case of this one for example,

manufactured in the reign of a King George, of whom there have been several, one can clearly see (if one looks) that this one was made during the reign of George VI. The R in GR in the case of a King stands for Rex, so here GR means George Rex (i.e. King George).

It can be quite good fun looking at the old postboxes to see how old they must be.  Have a look at some older models of postboxes and also some used in other countries where the UK exported them.  You’ll find the link here.