Planted Towns

 My dear husband and I are on holiday in the Cotswolds this week. On our first day, we visited Northleach, a charming little town with a beautiful church. And discovered that it is one of several 'planted towns' in the Cotswolds - others including Chipping Campden, Moreton in Marsh, Stow on the Wold, Burford, Wooton Under Edge and Chipping Sodbury. 

According to the helpful leaflet we picked up, from which the map above is taken, "hundreds of such market towns were 'planted' in England and Wales following the Norman conquest in 1066, producing a network allowing people to journey to and from market in a single day."

Who knew that town planning and the concept of 'new towns' went back that far? I certainly didn't. There was a fascinating display explaining the features of planted towns inside Northleach's magnificent church, St Peter and St Paul, which is one of the Cotswold "wool churches" built by wealthy wool merchants. We have visited several examples this week.

Perhaps most people know about this phenomenon, and it was merely my ignorance that I did not. But my husband, who has a town planning degree, hadn't either.

The quotation from Ecclesiastes that keeps running through my head is, "There is nothing new under the sun." So the much vaunted 'new towns' post war, such as Harlow and Basildon and Milton Keynes, are only a reinvention of a much older planning solution - the planted town. And both planted towns and new towns have been successful because they were situated wisely, where they would be of benefit to their inhabitants - the planted towns to enable easier journeys to market from the surrounding countryside, the new towns to house the burgeoning populations of our 20th and 21st century cities.

And I know that some Christian denominations plant ministries to bring their particular brand of Christianity to new places. Perhaps Unitarians might do the same? I know of a couple of examples...