Because of some confusion over the status of large villages such as Milborne Port in Somerset (which, oddly enough, possesses a "Village Hall" and its more ancient "Town Hall"), the following widely accepted scheme is used on this site. . .

Hamlet
	A collection of farms and/or dwellings which does not possess a church.
Village
	A collection of farms and/or dwellings which possesses a church.
Town
	A settlement which possesses a town council and a mayor. Towns recieved the right to self-government by a town council and mayor usually by Royal Charter or by a charter granted by the feudal lord who possessed them (as in the case of Poole in Dorset which was part of the manor of Canford Magna) in return for a payment or, as in the case of the Cinque Ports, in return for services rendered.

The earliest human inhabitants of the British Isles who spanned the last ice Age were the Stone Age hunter/gatherers of the Palaeolithic and Mezzolithic (c. 1,800 BC to c. 600 BC) periods. They moved about, following the animals which were their prey and left little evidence of their existence other than the durable stone tools which they used, the "flint factories" where they made them and scant evidence such as the remains in Gough's Cave near modern Cheddar in Somerset which was occupied about 11,000 BC by hunters who stalked their prey in the Cheddar Gorge.

The Neolithic (New Stone Age) people who migrated across Europe from the Middle East and arrived in the southern British Isles about 5,000BC brought the first agriculture with them and were thus tied by their crops to the first permanent or semi-permanent settlements.

The population of some three thousand wandering people in the British Isles had made little impact on the environment, particularly on the woodlands which covered the land from coast to coast excepting in the higland areas. The Neolithic farmers chose to settle on the less densely wooded and more accessible hilltops as did the people of the Bronze Age (c. 1,800 BC to c. 600 BC) who supplemented their stone tools with metal implements made of bronze. They left ample evidence of their presence in remote places such as the Isles of Scilly, Bodmin Moor and the Penwith Peninsula in Cornwall and the famous Stonehenge and Avebury stone circle (and the many monuments in the surrounding areas) in Wiltshire. Despite the impressive monuments which they left, the bronze Age people lived in small scattered communities on the land which they farmed.

The strongly tribal people of the Iron Age (c. 600BC-AD43) also preferred to live on the hilltops and are famous for the legacy of the massive hill forts such as Cadbury Castle (Somerset), Maiden Castle and badbury Rings (Dorset) and Barbury Castle and Liddington Castle (on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire) which they have left us. Within these huge ramparts, topped with pallisades they lived in groups of round huts constructed on a wooden framework with wattle and daub walls and thatched or turfed roofs which have long since disappeared. Where stone was available locally and wood less so because of millenia of woodland clearance for farming as on the moors of Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, Wales and other highlands in the British Isles, they built their houses in stone with Thatched or turfed roofs and some of these remain as at Carn Euny and Chysauster in Cornwall. Carn Euny and Chysauster are small villages of what are known as "courtyard houses" with several rooms arranged around a central courtyard. Chysauster is also probably the earliest known village built along a street.

The Romans invaded the British Isles in AD43 and first introduced towns. Many of the Iron Age hill forts were conquered and abandoned, some forcibly. Many of these towns were military in origin and centres for the administration of the province. Laid out on a grid pattern with public buildings and spaces such as a market place in the centre and frequently fortified, the new towns attracted the wealthy Celts who emulated the habits of the Roman rulers. With Rome itself threatened by the barbarians, the Roman legions were withdrawn from the British Isles and the province abandoned about AD410. The urban society maintained during the Roman occupation disintegrated as the Romano-British returned to the rural habits of their Celtic ancestors and the Saxons who, no longer obstructed by the Roman defenses of "The Saxon Shore", started to invade and settle the south east, lived on their farms or in small hamlets having no interests in the towns which were left to decay.

Viking raids in the eighth and ninth century forced the Saxons to withdraw from their scattered farms in the countryside into more compact and readily defensible villages. The Saxon towns were small and, in the time of King Alfred of Wessex (c.871-c.901), many (known as "burghs") were fortified by enclosing them within walls as protection against the Viking raids.

It was also during the time of the Viking raids that Saxon England was organised on a larger scale the "shires" which have survived into modern times as counties so that larger militias could be raised to combat the Viking threat.

Although villages and towns grew as the population of England and Wales grew generally (despite temporary setbacks such as the black death) and some villages were abandoned while a few larger settlements such as Old Sarum were moved (to New Sarum, modern Salisbury), the essentasilly rural economy which prevailed until the advent of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century which led to a rapid expansion of towns meant that most of the population lived in the villages and hamlets of the countryside. Urban populations did recieve a boost after the black death as some of those disposessed by the enclosure of common land for luctartive sheep rearing moved to local towns to find a living.

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