Built Environment : Place Types : Urban Places :

Hamlets

A Historical / Geographical / Morphological Discussion



Hamlets
The Smallest Towns and Most Crowded Rural Places

Nipgen, Ross County, Ohio (view west-northwest)

Hamlets are the most populous / most concentrated rural place type, and the smallest urban place type: They are the transition between rural and urban. A top population suggested by Trewartha is 150.

Trewartha wrote an excellent definition of hamlets, as I had discussed, concerning the hamlet of Rome in the ASC Group report on Lawrence Route 7 (Trewartha 1943: 32-40):

Trewartha wrote at a time when hamlets were not yet relics of the pre-automobile era, and he emphasizes activity and building function in his definition. For the sake of potential eligibility, clear indications of historical activity and functions are sufficient (National Park Service 1991b: 16). Specifically, Trewartha states that

hamlets are agglomerations of people together with their residences and work units. This clustering effect should be sufficiently marked so that the field worker is conscious of a perceptible node in the fabric of rural settlement. It should be so real as to be unmistakably conspicuous in the field. Defined quantitatively, I propose that there must be a minimum of

  1. four active residences, at least two of which area non-farm houses

  2. a total of at least six active...functions--residential, business social or otherwise; and

  3. a total of at least five buildings actively used by human beings (Trewartha 1943 37).

Other hamlets had lost integrity from replacement, alteration and loss of buildings; obliteration from surrounding post-historical development; and physical deterioration due to economic decline. [The hamlet of] Rome is relatively intact: most of the buildings appear to be intact and represent the historical functions; the surrounding development has not obscured it; and the buildings are generally in good to excellent condition. I.e, it is readily identifiable as a historical hamlet.

Trewartha continues to propose a maximum: (emphasis and paragraph separations added)

For a number of reasons a population of approximately 150 (not more than 38 residences) was adopted as the maximum for hamlets, and therefore the limit separating them from villages.

When settlements reach that size it was found that there existed a distinct tendency for them to incorporate. Apparently they become conscious of their of their contrast with the county or township in general and, as a community, desire more services than which the county or township in which they are located is willing [or able?] to provide.

It was found also that in communities with over 150 inhabitants there was a marked tendency for a distinct business core to develop, a feature that is not conspicuous in most hamlets.

The population figure of 150 likewise seems to separate settlements where doctors, dentists, lawyers, and other professional men are nearly completely absent, from those larger ones where they are more common. (Teachers and preachers are not so uncommon even in hamlets.) (Trewartha 1943: 37-38)

Another indicator for maximum size is whether the town had (or still has) a village government. Hamlets function without them; villages have passed a threshold (which the law recognizes by its population minimum(?)) and need government....

Relevant size and population have now changed with our status as an automobile-dependant culture. This has relegated formerly isolated businesses to obsolescence, and has thus enlarged the de facto meaning of hamlet...e.g.:

...Though, I propose a classification between Hamlets and Villages: the Sub-Village, q.v.

For examples of hamlets see the Hamlet section in Urban Places.


Annotated Selected Sources

  • John Brinkerhoff Jackson 1984 Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (Yale University Press)

  • Trewartha, Glenn T. 1943 "The Unincorporated Hamlet. One Element of the American Settlement Fabric." Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Vol. 33, no. 1 (March 1943): 32-81. (Yale University Press)