Hamlet (place) - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the word 'hamlet' has no defined legal meaning, although hamlets are recognised as part of land use planning policies and administration. A hamlet is traditionally defined ecclesiastically as a village or settlement that usually does not have its own church, belonging to a parish of another village or town. In modern usage it 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, may be the result of the depopulation of a village.

The term hamlet was used in some parts of the country for a geographical subdivision of a parish (which might or might not contain a settlement). Elsewhere, these subdivisions were called "townships" or "tithings".

In the Scottish Highlands the term clachan, of Gaelic derivation, may be preferred to the term "hamlet". Also found in Scotland more generally is 'Fermtoun' used in the specific case of a settlement of 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 a geographical locality, not a small village.