A Hamlet (definition)
A hamlet is an English word describing a small village (strictly in Britain) without an in use church building.
Origin: Middle English: from Old French hamelet, diminutive of hamel ‘little village’; related to home ( hám in Old English).
In England, it tends to mean a small place without a mainstream church (Church of England or Roman Catholic), with worship being catered for by other religions such as Methodism, Wesleyianism, Quakerism, Presbyterianism etc. It can have all the other amenities provided by larger villages - schools, meeting places, pubs as well as housing but does tend to mean a place smaller than a village, so fewer houses occupying, in total, less space than a village.
In modern (England) usage, hamlet generally refers to a secondary settlement in a civil parish, after the main settlement (if any). Hamlets may have been formed around a single source of economic activity such as a farm, mill, mine or harbour that employed its working population. Some hamlets, particularly those that have a medieval church building, maybe the result of the depopulation of a village; an example of such a hamlet being Graby, Lincolnshire. Because of the hilly topography of the parish, the village of Clent, situated on the Clent Hills, Worcestershire (31 miles from Birmingham city centre) consists of five distinct hamlets.
In Wales, the term hamlet was used to denote a geographical subdivision of a parish (which might or might not contain a settlement). The Welsh word for 'hamlet' is pentrefan (also pentrefyn), with the loose meaning of 'small village'.
In Scotland, and particularly in the Scottish Highlands the term clachan, of Gaelic derivation, may be preferred to the term hamlet. Also found in Scotland more generally is "ferm toun" used in the specific case of a farm settlement, including outbuildings and agricultural workers' homes.
In Northern Ireland the common Irish place name element "baile" is sometimes considered equivalent to the term hamlet in English, although baile would actually have referred to what is known in English today as a townland: that is to say, a geographical locality rather than a small village.
The word "Hamlet" has other specific meanings:
- A legendary Danish prince and hero of Shakespeare's play Hamlet
- Any of various sea basses of the family Serranidae, found in the warm waters of the western Atlantic Ocean, especially the Nassau grouper.
- In American (English), a very small village.
- In New York state, an unincorporated community that is within a town and is not a part of a village.
- A community of people smaller than a village.
- A settlement smaller than a town.