[Talk-GB] Wickham Market, Suffolk

[Mark Goodge]

On 07/09/2018 12:51, Chris Hill wrote:
> One place to look is OS Open Names. That has place names listed with a 
> category of populated place that seems to be hamlet, village, town or 
> suburban area. That lists Wickham Market as a town.

That seems to be going solely by size, and is used to indicate how the 
name is displayed on OS maps. I'm not sure it's necessarily valuable in 
other contexts.

> Wikipedia, on the other hand, says it is a large village.
> 
> The parish council website sits on the fence and calls it a 'thriving 
> community'.

It has a dropdown link for "Our Village" at the top. But, interestingly, 
that gives some of the history which indicates that it was once 
considered a town - it had a charter market, and two charter fairs, but 
these have since lapsed. So that may be the root cause of the 
disagreement in this case - there may be people who think that the past 
is more important than the current situation (see also, historic counties!).

Legally, it's definitely not a town as it has a parish council, not a 
town council.

> I'd plump for townage or maybe villown.

Or, maybe, just "place" :-)

Mark