Ingredients of a village

 If you’re interested in the notion of “place,” Ronald Blythe is worth reading. He says that when English people look at a village, they are looking for evidence of the good life.

Here’s the checklist:

• a tall old church on the hillside

• a pub selling the local brew

• a pretty stream

• a football pitch

• a handsome square vicarage with a cedar of Lebanon shading it

• a school with jars of tadpoles in the window

• three shops with doorbells

• a Tudor mansion

• half a dozen farms and a lot of quaint cottages.

When people live together, what they choose to build, preserve and support defines the place. “Place” is not just what’s there.

• Source: Ronald Blythe, Akenfield; New York Review Books, 2015, p. 16.