A model village is a separate, mostly self-contained community to house workers away from the industrial city in which they work. "Model" is used in the sense of it being an ideal.
Model villages were created in the United Kingdom by some of the first industrialists. Eighteenth-century industrialists such as Arkwright and Wedgwood built housing for their workers, but fully developed settlements are more typical of the nineteenth century and continue into the twentieth. Most on the news recently has been Poundbury, a model village in rural Dorset guided by the Prince of Wales.
Model villages were built by philanthropist industrialists such as Titus Salt and George Cadbury to house their workers and provide social amenities. Architects associated with the movement include the designer of Woodlands Model Village and Creswell Model Village, Percy B. Houfton. They were influential in the development of the garden city movement.
There were often significant restrictions for living in model villages, often depending on the particular views of the builder. For example, Bournville model village had no pubs, because Cadbury abjured alcohol. And because they tended to be quite a distance from work, transportation also became an issue— perhaps the first time in history that commuting became significant (though it was not called that).
There are also some agricultural villages which can be seen as model villages. English examples are seen when a medieval settlement has been rebuilt by a rural landowner, as at Edensor (on the Chatsworth estate) and Selworthy.
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Villages in Great Britain
England
(Chronological order)
- Blaise Hamlet, Bristol, England - (1811)
- Selworthy, Somerset, England - (1828)
- Snelston, Derbyshire, England - (1840s)
- Railway Village, Swindon, England - (1840s)
- Meltham, West Yorkshire, England - (1850)
- Saltaire, West Yorkshire, England - (1853)
- Akroydon, West Yorkshire, England - (1859)
- Nenthead, Cumbria England - (1861)
- Copley, West Yorkshire, England - (1874)
- Bournville, West Midlands, England - (1879)
- Port Sunlight, Merseyside, England - (1888)
- Creswell, Derbyshire, England - (1895)
- New Earswick, North Yorkshire, England - (1901)
- Woodlands, South Yorkshire, England - (1905)
- Silver End, Essex, England - (1926)
- Stewartby, Bedfordshire, England - (1926)
- Poundbury, Dorset, England - (Construction started 1993 - ongoing)
Some villages were built around coal mines. In Yorkshire, the villages of Grimethorpe, Goldthorpe, Woodlands and Fitzwilliam were all built to house workers at the colliery, around which the houses were built. Following the mass pit closures of 1984-94, many of these villages suffered from huge losses in population.
Ireland
(Chronological order)
- Portlaw, Waterford, Ireland (1825)
- Sion Mills, Northern Ireland (1835)
- Bessbrook, Northern Ireland (1845)
- Laurelvale, Northern Ireland (1850s)
Scotland
- New Lanark, Scotland (1786)
Wales
- Portmeirion
- Tremadog (started 1798)
Villages in Continental Europe
Italy
In Italy's Lombardy region, Crespi d’Adda is a particularly well-preserved model workers' village, and has been a World Heritage Site since 1995. It was built from scratch, starting in 1878, to provide housing and social services for the workers in a cotton textile factory erected on the banks of the river Adda.
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Germany
In Germany, Stadt des KdF-Wagens was built for the Volkswagen factory.
Spain
The town of Nuevo Baztán outside of Madrid dates from the mercantilist and entrepreneurial ambitions of an industrialist from the early 18th century.
Villages in America
United States of America
Model villages were also built in the United States along the same lines as planned industrial communities, for example at Gwinn, Michigan and Pullman, Illinois. There were also such agricultural communities as the 18th century Davis Bend, Mississippi.
Venezuela
- Jají, Campo Elías Municipality. A planned village in the Andes, Jají was restored in the twentieth century in Spanish Colonial style.
See also
related 'Idealised' town building schemes
References
For Individual entries see the articles. Standard reference work on subject (including some US and European examples) are;
- Gillian Darley's 'Villages of Vision: A Study of Strange Utopias' first published 1975 (Architectural Press, pb 1978 Paladin) and republished with fully revised gazetteer 2007 (Five Leaves Publications)
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