When is a village not a village? (when it’s a town?)
Wednesday morning
What a lovely crisp wintry morning (and doesn’t wintry look odd spelled like that?). There’s frost everywhere and the sun is shining making it sparkle. Again I’m glad I don’t have to travel far today like I did yesterday, when I went to the Guild shop to do another days duty. Honestly that dratted auto-piloty thing and not really twigging about where I was going yesterday saw me pootling up the road towards Guildford for 10 minutes in totally the wrong direction for the road I normally take. I suddenly realised I was going the wrong way as my brain was working out the rest of the route and I had to stop and see if I could get back on track easily. Fortunately for me there was a short cut across country which took me through Ewehurst and Cranleigh, which I was quite pleased about because I’ve never seen Cranleigh and my curiosity has been very piqued by all the signs that you see on the road that say ‘Cranleigh, England’s largest village‘.
I have to say that after driving through the place, It’s gotta be a town, it’s so big. Anyway, what is the definition of a village or town? Surely if it has a big church, used to have a hospital and has a largish supermarket and a couple of pedestrianised shopping squares it counts as a town? In modern day terms it must be a town if it boasts a ‘Costa coffee’? Wikipedia says a town can be a village that is larger than surrounding villages and has a regular market, and is also a community that doesn’t survive on mainly agriculture – well I passed signs to what looked like a large industrial estate. A village can also decide to call itself a town by it’s Parish Council calling themselves a ‘Town Council’. So I reckon it should be called a town, but they want to keep themselves as the largest village. And why not, if you’ve got a uniqueness, flaunt it!
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