{A} The Neolithic longhouse was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the first farmers in Europe beginning at least as early as the period 5000 to 6000 BC. The origin of the name blackhouse is of some debate. It could be less than 150 years old and may have been synonymous with inferior. On Lewis, in particular, it seems to have been used to distinguish the older blackhouses from some of the newer white-houses (Scottish Gaelic: taigh-geal, Irish: tí geal, tí bán), with their mortared stone walls. There may also be some confusion arising from the phonetic similarity between the ‘dubh’ , meaning black and taghadh meaning thatch. The houses in Scotland were built high rather than wide; however, some were built small and wide.

{B} The buildings were generally built with double-wall dry-stone walls packed with earth and wooden rafters covered with a thatch of turf with cereal straw or reed. The floor was generally flagstones or packed earth and there was a central hearth for the fire. There was no chimney for the smoke to escape through. Instead, the smoke made its way through the roof. The blackhouse was used to accommodate livestock as well as people. People lived at one end and the animals lived at the other with a partition between them.

{C} It is estimated that there are over ten thousand villages in Britain, yet defining the term ‘village’ isn’t as simple as it may at first sound. When does a hamlet become a village? And when does a village become a town?

{D} Strictly speaking the term ‘village’ comes from the Latin ‘villaticus’, which roughly translates as ‘a group of houses outside a villa farmstead’. Today a village is understood as a collection of buildings (usually at least 20) that is larger than a hamlet, yet smaller than a town, and which contains at least one communal or public building. This is most commonly the parish church, though it can be a chapel, school, public house, shop, post office, smithy or mill. Villagers will share communal resources such as access roads, a water supply, and usually a place of worship

{E} A hamlet is a smaller grouping of buildings that don’t necessarily have any public or service buildings to support it. A significant difference is that it won’t have a parish church like a village does, and most hamlets contain only between three and twenty buildings.

{F} The point at which a village becomes a town is difficult to determine and is probably best defined by those who live there. However, since the Middle Ages, the term ‘town’ has been a legal term that refers to the fact that the community has a borough charter. The situation is confused by the fact that there are many town-like suburban communities calling themselves villages (for example, Oxton Village in Birkenhead), as well as designed suburban ‘villages’ such as those built under the Garden Village Movement.

{G} The 2001 census shows us that approx 80% of people in England live in an urban environment, with under 7% living in rural villages (the remainder live in rural towns or outside concentrated settlements). This is the exact opposite of the situation two centuries ago, when under 20% of the population lived in the town, and the majority lived in rural villages. As late as 1851 agriculture remained the largest single source of employment in Britain, yet today under 3% of us work on the land.

{H} It is essential to remember that villages were created and have evolved because of particular combinations of geographical, commercial, economic and social factors. They expand, decline, move and fluctuate with the times. This article introduces some of the common forms of the village to be found in Britain.

The Medieval Village

{I} When we think of a British village we probably imagine a settlement of traditional cottages around a village green with a church and ancient manor house as a backdrop. This common form of the village has its roots in the medieval period when many villages started out as a cluster of agricultural dwellings

{J} Today farmsteads tend to be scattered about the landscape, but back in the medieval period those working on the land tended to live in small nucleated settlements (villages) and worked ‘open-field’ agriculture where land wasn’t enclosed. In fact, over much of Britain in the period up to 1800, it would have been unusual to have seen a farm or cottage outside of a settlement boundary.

{K} By the time that the Domesday Book was written in 1086 most of the good agricultural land in Britain was already under cultivation, and England was a densely populated country. Two centuries later nucleated settlements were to be found over much of Britain, typically consisting of well-organised village settlements sitting within open fields.

{L} Over lowland Britain on good soil you would typically find a settlement every couple of miles, and the communities would use the open agricultural land around where they lived. The average village would have its church, manor house, and cottage tenements all clustered together, and the open land around would usually be divided into thin strips. In some villages, you can still see the remnants of medieval strip field systems around the periphery of the settlement. There would often be meadows, pasture and woodland held ‘in common, and only the lord of the manor would have his own, private land or ‘demesne’. In the medieval village, virtually everyone would have earned their living on the territory, hence the community had to be relatively self-sufficient.

{M} ‘Green Villages’ were a common village form, where houses clustered around a central green of common land. They are often the remnants of planned settlements introduced after the Norman Conquest in the 19th century. It is suggested that this arrangement allowed for easier defence, especially compared to the village form most common before the Normans, which was simple clusters of farms. However there is also evidence of ‘village’ greens in Anglo-Saxon settlements, and even at Romano-British sites.

{N} The village green was soon adopted as the main social space within a village, as well as its focal point alongside the church or chapel. Village greens often take a triangular form, usually reflecting the fact that the village was at the meeting of three roads. The continuing importance of the village green to modern-day communities is reflected in the fact that this is usually where the war memorial is seen, as well as village notice boards, where local cricket matches are played, and where public benches are placed. The Open Spaces Society states that in 2005 there were about 3,650 registered greens in England and about 220 in Wales.

{A} In technology and the media-driven world, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get our students’ attention and keep them absorbed in classroom discussions. This generation, in particular, has brought a unique set of challenges to the educational table. Whereas youth are easily enraptured by high-definition television, computers, Pods, video games, and cell phones, they are less than enthralled by what to them are obsolete textbooks and boring classroom lectures. The question of how to teach history in a digital age is often contentious. On the one side, the old guard thinks the professional standards history is in mortal danger from flash-in-the-pan challenges by the digital that is all show and no substance. On the other side, the self-styled “disruptors” offer overblown rhetoric about how digital technology has changed everything while the moribund profession obstructs all progress in the name of outdated ideals. At least, that’s a parody (maybe not much of one) of how the debate proceeds. Both supporters and opponents of the digital share more disciplinary common ground than either admits.

{B} When provided with merely a textbook as a supplemental learning tool, test results have revealed that most students fail to pinpoint the significance of historical events and individuals. Fewer still are able to cite and substantiate primary historical sources. What does this say about the way our educators are presenting information? The quotation comes from a report of a 1917 test of 668 Texas students. Less than 10 per cent of school-age children attended high school in 1917; today, enrollments are nearly universal. The whole world has turned on its head during the last century but one thing has stayed the same: Young people remain woefully ignorant about history reflected from their history tests. Guess what? Historians are ignorant too, especially when we equate historical knowledge with the “Jeopardy” Daily Double. In a test, those specializing in American history did just fine. But those with specialities in medieval, European and African history failed miserably when confronted by items about Fort Ticonderoga, the Olive Branch Petition, or the Quebec Act–all taken from a typical textbook. According to the testers, the results from the recent National Assessment in History, like scores from earlier tests, show that young people are “abysmally ignorant” of their own history. Invoking the tragedy of last September, historian Diane Ravitch hitched her worries about our future to the idea that our nation’s strength is endangered by youth who do poorly on such tests. But if she were correct, we would have gone down the tubes in 1917!

{C} There is a huge difference between saying “Kids don’t know the history we want them to know” and saying “Kids don’t know history at all.” Historical knowledge burrows itself into our cultural pores even if young people can’t marshal it when faced with a multiple-choice test. If we weren’t such hypocrites (or maybe if we were better historians) we’d have to admit that today’s students follow in our own footsteps. For too long we’ve fantasized that by rewriting textbooks we could change how history is learned. The problem, however, is not the content of textbooks but the very idea of them. No human mind could retain the information crammed into these books in 1917, and it can do no better now. If we have learned anything from history that can be applied to every time period, it is that the only constant changes. The teaching of history, or any subject for that matter, is no exception. The question is no longer whether to bring new technologies into everyday education; now, the question is which technologies are most suitable for the range of topics covered in junior high and high school history classrooms. Fortunately, technology has provided us with opportunities to present our Civil War lesson plans or our American Revolution lesson plans in a variety of new ways.

{D} Teachers can easily target and engage the learners of this generation by effectively combining the study of history with innovative multimedia. PowerPoint and presentations, in particular, can expand the scope of traditional classroom discussion by helping teachers to explain abstract concepts while accommodating students’ unique learning styles. PowerPoint study units that have been pre-made for history classrooms include all manner of photos, prints, maps, audio clips, video clips and primary sources which help to make learning interactive and stimulating. Presenting lessons in these enticing formats helps technology-driven students retain the historical information they’ll need to know for standard exams.

{E} Whether you’re covering Revolutionary War lesson plans or World War II lesson plans, PowerPoint study units are available in formats to suit the needs of your classroom. Multimedia teaching instruments like PowerPoint software are getting positive results the world over, framing conventional lectures with captivating written, auditory and visual content that helps students recall names, dates and causal relationships within a historical context.

{F} History continues to show us that new times bring new realities. Education is no exception to the rule. The question is not whether to bring technology into the educational environment. Rather, the question is which technologies are suitable for U.S. and world history subjects, from Civil War lesson plans to World War II lesson plans. Whether you’re covering your American Revolution lesson plans or your Cold War lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations are available in pre-packaged formats to suit your classroom’s needs.

{G} Meanwhile, some academic historians hold a different view on the use of technology in teaching history. One reason they hold is that not all facts can be recorded by film or videos and literature is relatively feasible in this case. Another challenge they have to be faced with is the painful process of learning a new technology like the making of PowerPoint and the editing of audio and video clips which is also reasonable especially to some elderly historians.

A. The medical world appears to be divided on the effects of the sun upon the human body. From statements like, “There is no known relationship between a tan and health” to “perhaps sun-tanned skin absorbs the ultraviolet rays and converts them into helpful energy”, there are some things which are still the topic of research. Doctors agree on one of the benefits of the sun – vitamin D.

It is well known that vitamin D is acquired from the direct rays of the sun – an entirely separate miracle from sun tanning. The sun’s ultraviolet rays penetrate only a tiny amount into the human skin, but in the process, they irradiate an element in the skin called ergosterol, which is a substance that stores up reserves of vitamin D received from the sun. This is both healthy and beneficial for human skin.

B. All around the Western World, people have developed an obsession with the sun. In many western countries, a suntan has become the trade-mark of a healthy, active, outdoor person. The basic reddish hue just beneath the surface of our skin is the outward reflection of the millions of red corpuscles flowing through tiny blood vessels. This is most noticeable in the pure skin of a baby which can change in a moment from porcelain white (with anger or a switch in temperature) to crimson. In Caucasians, this colouring is somewhat hidden by an acquired layer of sun-made pigment, which varies in tone according to the complexion and occupation of the individual.

C. Locale plays a big part in the effectiveness of the suntan. Mountain tops and beaches are nonpareil sun spas because they receive far purer sunlight than the rest of the land. Urban areas with their smoke and smog act as a filter removing all the healthy properties of the sun. Perhaps the seashore is best of all, with its air estimated to have at least a fifth of a per cent more oxygen than inland ether – free of city and inland dust, tars, pollen, and allergens.

D. The sun has long been called nature’s greatest health giver and healer and has played a chief role at health resorts ever since August Rollick, the Swiss father of heliotherapy, opened his first high-Alps sanatorium in 1903. Dr. W. W. Coblenz suggests that the sun cure is a major factor in the treatment of at least 23 skin diseases, ranging from acne and eczema to ulcers and wounds. Another specialist, Dr. Richard Kovacs writes, “Sun treatment is often helpful to persons suffering from general debility – repeated colds, respiratory diseases, influenza and the like”.

After a long winter, the return to the sun writes Dr. Leonard Dodds, the British sunlight scholar, “is a general stimulus to the body, more potent if applied after a period when it has been lacking which gradually loses its effect if exposure is over prolonged, even when not excessive”.

E. Over many years of study, dermatologists have proven that excessive exposure to sunlight for years is responsible for a large proportion of skin cancer amongst the population. Those with the greatest chance of doing permanent damage to their skin are the year-round outdoor workers – 90% of which occurs on the heavily exposed hands and face. The first line of defense against permanent sun damage is the skin’s own natural fatty matter and sweat, which combine to form an oily acid surface shield against the ultraviolet rays.

At the beach, the saltwater washes away this natural oily coat, the hot sun overworks the sweat glands so that the excess becomes ineffective and the dry wind and hot sun combine to dehydrate the skin itself. Over the years, women have shown far greater wisdom in the care of their skin than men. Since the ladies of ancient Egypt first began to apply the fat of the so-called sacred temple cats to their faces, women have been tireless in waging this battle against damage to the skin from the sun. Both sexes now contribute annually to a multi-million dollar global sunscreen business.

F. Other pans of the human body which tend to suffer from exposure to the sun are the eyes and hair. Many years ago, optometrists undertook studies in America to examine the influence of the sun upon the eyes by studying Atlantic City lifeguards and found that even a few hours in the bright sun without sunglasses could cause a significant loss of vision – a loss that might take several weeks from which to recover.

So gradual was the change that the lifeguards were unaware that their sight had been affected. The solution to this problem was to introduce sunglasses as a standard part of the lifeguard uniform. These were dark enough to absorb the sun’s harmful UV rays and most of its infrared and ultraviolet rays.

G. Of a lesser impact is the effect of the sun upon the hair. The penalty of the sun parching is a brittle dryness. Haircare professionals recommend a nutritional cream treatment with a substance containing lanolin to bring your hair back its natural softness, these usually come in the form of leave-in conditioners, and should be applied frequently, just as you would a sunscreen for the skin. Or, easier still, wear a hat. Wearing a hat has a dual effect: it protects the hair and helps to prevent the most dangerous of outdoor afflictions: sunstroke.