Richard Muir draws upon a deep personal understanding of the patterns of rural life to present an authoritative yet engaging history of the English village. He explores how these communities began, how they acquired their names, how they developed their characteristic forms, how they grew, and how they sometimes died. He reveals the realities of rustic existence from the earliest times to the Victorian era: how life was tied to the farming year, and how the relationship between peasant families and masters evolved over the centuries. The traditional village home and landscape--church, green, cross, stocks, inn, and school--are likewise explored and explained.