Is Corfe Mullen too big to be called a village?
This isn't about expansion (please feel free to start one about that), it's about whether the word 'village' applies even at the current population of over 10,000 people. I was raised in a modest-sized rural town of a similar size, but we had dozens of shops, a town hall, market, railway station, bus station, banks, small industrial estate.... and much more.
The thing is that we don't have a real centre, just a smattering of shops spread out along Wareham Road and I'm not sure it feels like a village. Will we lose that label in the near future and if so do we become a town?
What we do have - which must surely be unique for a British village is:
- two sub-post offices
- two Methodist churches
- two Anglican churches
- two Esso petrol stations
- two Co-op groceries
What else here is unique or at least unusual for a village?
Add your thoughts below and please keep to the subject.
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Corfe Mullen's village history
By today's standards Corfe Mullen is still a village, but in mentioning the "unique facilities ... what about The Old Mill which was mentioned in the Doomsday Book? Many villages have historic sites but how many of them have been maintained?
How about hearing from the village historians why they feel that Corfe Mullen is a unique village?
Chocolate Box
When I was a child, there was a television programme called "Jeux Sans Frontiers" where European countries played silly games. The commentator one time was saying that a team came from "a tiny village of 5000 people" and we sat round and howled at his silly assertion that such a place could be called a village if it had thousands of people in it! I'm not sure whether the size demarcations of places change much over time; maybe I'm wrong.
RE history: I usually see this "village" as a collection of modern (70s onwards) housing - that's what I literally see every day. I know that there are some houses which are quite a bit older but it's hard to imagine it, say 50 years ago, knowing that it would be so different and so much smaller than it is today.
Yes, there are some nice historic bits but when I wanted to capture some 'iconic' images to put on this site, I couldn't think of scenes which look nice, preferably with a bit of history and yet still representative of reality. A thatched cottage or historic mill or pub are attractive but don't genuinely give a picture of life here, they'd be "chocolate box" images, like one of a child specially tidied up for a photo, wearing best clothes and with combed hair, rather than dirty and untidy (but happy).
Corfe Mullen Ghosts
Most village’s and towns in England are experiencing tremendous expansion with modern housing and it is inevitable as the population grows. Gone are the days when plagues and disease would almost wipe a village out. At the same time for some people it is important to know the history. Corfe Mullen is not like one of the new garden city’s that were developed from virtually nothing. Even the name has been derived from the location. Corfe, from cutting in the hillside, and “molin” from the Old French for mill mentioned in the Doomsday Book.
According to British History on Line in 1848 Corfe Mullen had 758 inhabitants on 3086 acres of ground. Of that ground 148 acres was common ground. Today, 161 years later there are well over 10,000 inhabitants.
Few of the descendants of family’s from the 18th and 19th century still live in Corfe Mullen. In fact in the 19th century in the 1841 census there were 70 inhabitants with the name of "Cherrett" that’s 9.23% of the population calculated from the above figures. By the1891 census this was reduced to 6 "Cherrett" names. Other Corfe Mullen families will find similar statistics. Many descendants to return in later years as employment and transport facilities improve. With modern day transport and roads, a place like this, is ideal for people working in the nearby towns, who still want to be based within a village.
The shortage of “chocolate box pictures” is probably because during earlier years the main landowners did not live within the Parish boundary it is just their farms that were there. The landowners themselves lived outside the Parish. The only exception seems to be the Phelips family. Although there was some development in Corfe Mullen prior to WW1, most happened after the war, with the rapid escalation of housing estates, to cater for the expanding population working in towns close by.
However I think if one asks the descendants of Corfe Mullen family’s to search their attics, one will find some very good old pictures that will reflect what the village was really like, rather than looking for modern day scenes. I know I have some set in Cornwall and believe me they show the people as there were standing outside their adobe home with dirt paths and roads. It must have been raining because the photograph captures the mud splattered ground length cloths. These are the pictures that won’t make it to the chocolate box’s, but do show life as it was.
Attic
Yes, CM has certainly grown, and as the UK population grows, many places need to expand to provide housing, work and facilities. I don't think we have a special right not to share this burden but I think the last places this new building should happen are where attractive open countryside or good farmland would be engulfed in sprawl. When other places have shrinking populations and empty housing or brown field sites suited to re-use for building, this seems wrong.
The problem I was raising is that we use the label 'village' when we should perhaps be more accurately called a suburb or 'dormitory housing area', but maybe this isn't too important. The lack of representative chocolate box pictures might also be a pity but nothing more.
Searching your attic for artifacts might be worthwhile if the house is more than a very few decades old and has been in the same family for a long while. If people here bought a modest 30 year old 'semi' ten years ago, the chances of finding anything of interest are slim.