Saturday 9 April 2016

A-Z Challenge 2016: H is for Hamlet

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com
No, I'm not talking Yorick and Shakespeare et al.  This is local history.

A hamlet was usually comprised of a manor house, a parish church (if it once used to be a village), and sometimes a few other buildings, often surrounding a farmhouse or a mill. Usually 100 people or less. Think of a village that has shrunk in the wash.  The name itself comes from Anglo-Norman hamelette, which harks back to Old French.

In fact, in 18th century France it was once the fashion for rich people to create a hamlet in their garden! complete with rustic houses and farms (and actually very comfortable).  Marie Antoinette had one created for her at Versailles, but it contained rather more than rustic buildings; there was a Temple of Love, a grotto, a belvedere, fragrant flowers, meadowland, streams, and lakes.  There was even a tower like a lighthouse!






© 2016 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved

8 comments:

  1. Lovely, I'd love to visit and soak up the atmosphere! Maybe stay a year and write, write, write! :)

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    1. I think that some of us who live in the UK tend to accept history (and local history) as so much a part of life, that we forget to 'soak up the atmosphere'. We don't even notice that there IS an atmosphere!

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  2. Trust that Marie-Antoinette - bet there was loads of cake in her hamlet too!! I think our village was probably a hamlet when it started it out centuries ago. We went on a day trip to Lincoln Archive office today to find out more about our house (as it used to belong to the church and the Lincoln diocese stretched so far down the country!) and the staff there could not have been more helpful - we found out a lot :)
    Pempi
    A Stormy’s Sidekick
    Special Teaching at Pempi’s Palace

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    1. Glad you were so successful. There are many many more items offline than there are online.

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  3. So, if it has a Parish Church, it would usually be a village?

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    1. Unless it used to be a village, but a lot of people moved away, so it became a hamlet (100 people or under). But then this is England- so the only things 'set in stone' are the buildings LOL. It's probably better to go by number of people.

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  4. Interesting! I'm with Marie Antoinette, sounds heavenly!

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    1. A balanced diet is a piece of cake in EACH hand...

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