VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

Over 400 model towns and villages exist in Britain, built by philanthropic individuals and companies to house workers to make concrete radical philosophies and to try out experimental solutions to social and economic problems. They are places that reveal a society in flux, exposing the debates that preoccupied a changing Europe. The concept of the model village is not a distinctively British one; it was, however, in Britain from the end of the eighteenth century that the idea flourished. The complex interplay of private power and public authority in the development of all the settlements, makes each place distinctive; personal ideals are made tangible in a way that is rarely possible. Experimenting with architectural design, principles of placemaking and the relationship between landscape and built environment, these villages provided unique environments which brought together commercial imperatives and utopian ideals. This paper visits some of these village experiments to explore their rich histories and to understand the social, political and cultural contexts from which they emerged. It highlights the factors that made these small, sometimes plain, settlements influential. It examines what remains of the impulses and ideals which made them so fashionable, and looks at the dynamic processes which continue to shape them. It explores how our understanding of these places has changed as they have become ‘heritage’, how their identities have been preserved and what this means for the communities who still regard them as home.