Exploring why one man's town is often another man's village

There is nothing new in this, of course. For many years, people have been living in rural areas and commuting to work in towns.

I did precisely that almost 40 years ago, while well over 60 years ago I recall a neighbour travelling daily by train to Middlesbrough from a village in Eskdale.

In another case, a man travelled daily to work in Newcastle upon Tyne from a village to the south of the North York Moors.

What is interesting about the modern tendency to adopt this lifestyle is that city dwellers seem to have their own vision of what is considered to be the countryside.

It seems that they are moving into places like Richmond, Beverley, Keighley, Ilkley and similar towns, regarding these as countryside, although I am sure some do buy houses in the rural areas surrounding these places.

Nonetheless, this led me to wonder about the distinction between a village and a town.

Many years ago, when I was a young constable patrolling the streets of Whitby, a visitor from a southern town stopped for a chat, during which he praised Whitby for being such an interesting village.

This puzzled me because I regarded Whitby as a town, but since that time I have regularly seen it described in travel articles as a fascinating and historic fishing village. But it does have a town hall!

This contrasts vividly with a seven-year-old lad I took to Castleton in Yorkshire's Eskdale. He was delighted to be taken into that town, as he called it.

He lived on a farm miles from the nearest village without any near neighbours. He thought Castleton was a town because it had pavements, street lights and shops along with what, in his mind, were a lot of houses all clustered together.

So when does a village become a town? None of my dictionaries are much help because they say that a town is larger than a village, but smaller than a city, while a village is smaller than a town, but larger than a hamlet.

Years ago, a hamlet was a lowly term because it indicated a small community without the benefit of a set of stocks in which to imprison defaulters, and no self-respecting village wished to be known by that name.

Just as the residents of many of our smaller towns, especially market towns like Thirsk, Stokesley, Bedale, Easingwold and others of that kind, may not like their communities referred to as villages when they are often categorised as such by visitors.

I've often heard Bedale called a delightful village, but I wonder if any of our region's villages are known to outsiders as towns?

Is Thornaby on Tees a village or town, for example? Certainly in my part of the north, many former villages have been absorbed into growing towns - York is a good example, with places like Heworth and Acomb now being part of the city - and yet, in most cases, they have retained their village identities and names.

The people who live in them will refer to them as villages even if they are now part of suburbia. A resident of Heworth will tell another resident of York that he lives in Heworth, but he will tell a stranger that he lives in York.

This blurring of the distinction between a village and a town is by no means new. Indeed, it happened in biblical times.

Long before the birth of Christ, towns could be identified in Palestine and they were distinguished from other settlements because, although they housed the agricultural population, they were surrounded by fences to provide protection against marauding nomads.

These towns also boasted gates and streets, and housed a range of services such as markets, courts and inns.

Here in England, the names of thousands of our villages end in the word "ton", which is derived from "tun" or "tune", ancient words meaning town.

It appears that, far back in history, a town or township was little more than a collection of farms or dwelling houses, something we might now describe as a hamlet.

Over the years, it would grow and grow until it was larger than a village and so became a town.

It seems lots of villages, however, were owned by the Lord of the Manor, while towns, invariably larger, did not have a single owner, although there were also many villages without a sole owner.

In looking at some old names, there is a puzzling example at Kirklevington, near Yarm on Tees.

An old reference book tells me: "The village of Kirklevington was probably so-called as being a town with a parish church" and the parish of Kirklevington was divided into four quarters, each called a township - Kirklevington, Castle Levington, Low Worsall and Picton.

In fact, the name of Picton comes from Peak Town, but it appears it was known both as a town and a village and there is no doubt that lots of our present villages were earlier known as townships.

So does a village become a town when it reaches a certain size, or does it require something extra like a church, town hall or social centre?

A wicker basket is an essential part of my shopping equipment when I visit our local market, and during a recent excursion I met a woman who was carrying a massive example on her arm.

I reckoned that, if she filled it with groceries, she'd be unable to carry the weight, but she was certainly making good use of its undoubted capacity.

I was reminded of the value of wicker baskets when a friend expressed his view that they were far more environmentally-friendly than plastic shopping bags.

Not only that, of course, being rigid they can accommodate a considerable range of items without squashing them and they are easily carried in cars without being liable to fall over.

Their nicely rounded handles don't bite into one's fingers, either!

Wicker baskets are by no means a modern invention. In ancient Mesopotamia, often regarded as the cradle of civilisation and now part of Iraq, the legend of creation was that the god Marduk had plaited a wicker hurdle and placed it on the surface of the water. Then he created dust and placed it upon the hurdle to make the earth from which all things grew.

A West African myth also tells how a flat-bottomed wicker basket was used as the foundation of the system which included the Earth, sun and stars, while other civilisations have also used the basket as the symbol of creation.

Hebrew scriptures refer to various types of basket, including the dud, the teba, the kelub and the salsilloth. Many of these were made from rushes and were used by carpenters for carrying their tools, for carrying figs, grain and even birds.

Although we tend to think of baskets when speaking of wicker products, they are only a small proportion of the objects which can be fashioned from osiers.

Today, lots of garden furniture has its origins in wicker weaving and, as a result, this most ancient of crafts is enjoying a revival, with all manner of container now being fashioned in this way.

Examples include baskets for pets, laundry, mail, textiles, theatre props, fruit, vegetables, animal feed, seeds, racing pigeons and other birds, wine bottles, fish and nibbles like potato crisps or bread buns.

The craft also produces picnic hampers, cradles, beds, chairs, cabinets, crash helmets, lobster pots, storage units of all kinds and household mats, and the osier is even used in house construction. Very soft osiers can also be utilised for making clothes such as skirts or even raincoats.

The finest raw material in this country comes from the aptly-named basket willow tree, sometimes called the osier.

Grown mainly in Somerset, it is coppiced to make it produce the long, slender stems known as withies.

Growing and harvesting the crop is highly skilled, and the creation of woven objects from them is equally remarkable.

I think much of the pleasure in this craft lies in fashioning baskets and other useful objects from natural products, the finest achievement being to create them without tools.

Tools are now used, of course, but in ancient times they were not and, even now, a clever weaver can produce a sturdy basket without the use of tools.

I think my friend was correct when he said these products, especially shopping baskets, are environmentally-friendly.

The name wicker, by the way, means interlaced osiers, twigs, canes or rods, and wickerwork is a description of the finished product