Day 12. The Village Green

 

Preston is a 'green' village: it is focussed around a central village green. This is a common feature of villages with Anglo-Saxon origins.

The green hails to a time when a secure pasture for livestock, defensible against neighbouring settlements, Danish raiders and wolves was near essential. The green would have been surrounded by wooden palings, now long since gone.
The green was the central point of the village, physically, religiously and socially. It was considered common ground for recreation and grazing livestock. Roads radiated from it and homesteads – often the larger farmhouses, as Church House and Locke's Farm illustrate –  faced it.

The church was almost always on the green; in Preston it stands on the south side on a natural prominence. The May Pole and a pound for straying cattle were also found on the green – the latter in Preston was against the church railings, later replaced with the present brick wall.
The stocks – where miscreants were punished for minor crimes such as blasphemy and playing sports on a Sunday – were located on village greens from Medieval times. In Preston they stood beneath a lime tree known as the Stocks Tree which blew down in the 1950s.
No other building was permitted on the green. This is why so many survive, long after the wolves and raiders were consigned to history books.