Village · Sarrum and Its County
Little Wether
Little Wether is a downs village in the Sarrum county, one of the four a traveller is most likely to encounter. It is among six villages on the chalk shoulder, each with between eighty and three hundred inhabitants. A stranger riding through several might think they were one place, yet they are distinct and their people do not marry across them.
- Within
- Sarrum and Its County
- Named in
- Book III, Book IV
History and lore
Little Wether is the largest of the six villages on the chalk shoulder and downs, and the only one with a clergyman living in it rather than riding over from a neighbour. A stranger crossing the county on the drove side is likely to meet it first, and many take it for typical of the rest, which the other five dispute.
It is a sheep village governed by its vestry of ratepayers, meeting monthly in the church, and by a fold reeve who manages the common and the order of folding. The vestry book, like those of its neighbours, has been kept carefully for centuries and records who was relieved, who was removed and where the bounds ran. Early summer brings the sheep-washing and then the shearing, and the parsonage beside the church gives the place a settled look its neighbours lack.
Having a resident incumbent makes Little Wether the easiest door into the shoulder: he will carry a civil stranger's question to the vestry. Wait to be introduced, and remember that what you ask here will be known in the other five by the end of the week.
Where the volumes speak of it
- Book IV › Chapter 18 — The County: Pasture, Wool, and the Long Arithmetic › 18.3 Villages, Vestries, and the Order of a Small Place
- Book IV › Chapter 22 — The Pit Villages and the Furnace Settlements › 22.2 The Chalk and Wold Villages
