The attenuated
pattern of greens and commons is found over much of Britain, but is
sparticularly well developed in the claylands of Suffolk,
Norfolk, Wiltshire and Hertfordshire. At one time, before the
urban expansion of the late Industrial Revolution, similar large
commons and associated sprawling settlement patterns could be found
on the claylands of the Forest of Arden and the Wood Green area of
west London. Nor, indeed, are they confined to the claylands of
southern England; greens and green villages elsewhere have
attracted the attention of geographers and historians for a number
of years. Writers on East Anglian settlement have long
recognized that greens and commons on the Essex, Suffolk and
Norfolk clays go hand in hand with a distinctive form of dispersed
settlement pattern. However, it is necessary to make a clear
distinction between this East Anglian settlement around greens and
commons and the more nucleated, regular and, in some cases, planned
variety of green village identified by geographers working in the
north of England.
Green villages
come in all shapes and sizes, but examples of the less regular
variety are now largely confined to the claylands of East Anglia,
because it was here that a number escaped enclosure
in
