Cities, towns and villages (in British English)

Today’s lesson is about vocabulary but it's also about life in Britain. I’m going to explain the difference between cities, towns and villages in the UK and what it’s like living in these places.

Maybe your language doesn’t have three different words like we do. I know that some languages have the same translation for both “town” and “city”. There are also languages in which “village” is the same as “countryside”.

Maybe you already know these words but there are probably some things that will surprise you about what these words mean in the UK! So even if you think you know these words, I hope you’ll keep reading!

Years ago, I had a student who told me he lived in a village. I asked him to describe his village and he said there was a primary school, a high school, a hospital, a library and many other things. I told him that sounded more like a town but he insisted it was a village! Maybe the difference between a village and a city is not the same in his culture but I think it’s more likely that he was just translating incorrectly. I don’t know for sure!

It’s because of conversations like the one above that I think this post is important! Let me first explain what the words mean in the UK, which is the same as saying what they mean in British English.

Village
There’s no official definition of what a village is, in terms of population or size, and it’s difficult to say when a village becomes a town. But generally speaking, a village is smaller than a town. It’s a group of houses and some other buildings, usually surrounded by countryside.

What can you find in a village? It varies a lot. A small village might be just a small group of houses and nothing else but most villages here have at least a pub and a church as well. A village might also have a shop where you can buy things like milk, bread and a newspaper. This shop sometimes includes a post office. Some villages have a few shops but never very many.

It’s also common to find a village hall, which is a building used for various community events and meetings. Some villages have a primary school but it’s not common to find a secondary school in a village.

In some countries, the people who live in a village are poor. This is not true in the UK. In fact, houses in villages are more expensive than houses in a town. This is probably because the houses are bigger and have more garden, and land is expensive. But also, a lot of people, especially middle-aged and older people, want to escape the city and live in a village. This pushes the prices up.

I live in a village and when I go for a walk, a lot of people smile and say hello. People are friendlier here than in a town or city. Another thing I like about living here is that I can easily go for a walk in the countryside.

The main disadvantage of living in a village is that you have to drive further if you want a supermarket, a clothes shop or a trip to the cinema, for example. I’m on a good bus route into the nearest city, Nottingham, but many villages have little or no public transport.  

Town
A town is bigger than a village. There are more houses and more shops. There’s usually a town centre, where most of the shops are, and there’s often a market square with a market once a week or more.

There might be a shopping centre (“mall” in American English). There’s usually more than one church and some big towns have places of worship for people of other religions. You can find lots of pubs, cafes and restaurants.

There’s usually at least one secondary school, more than one primary school and maybe a college of further education. There might also be at least one doctor’s surgery, dentist, optician, hairdresser, barber, bank and supermarket. A big town will probably have more than one of each.

There might also be a hospital, a cinema, a library, a police station and a fire station, depending on the size of the town. A town has a town council and their offices are in a building called the town hall.

A big town has everything you need without having to go into the city but in some of the smaller towns in the UK, things are not as good as they used to be. A lot of shop owners are going out of business as people buy more and more things online. Some town centres have empty shops and are not as lively as they once were, which is sad.

City
A city is usually bigger than a town but not always. It has all the same things as a town but usually more of them. There are usually more facilities, such as theatres, parks, a swimming pool and other sports facilities. As well as churches, a city also has places of worship for people of other religions.

Possibly the biggest difference between a town and a city is that a city also usually has at least one university and a cathedral, but again, not always.

Most people in the UK live in a house, especially if they live in a village or small town. Cities also have some flats and apartments.

Cities also have a better public transport system and it’s possible to manage without a car. Public transport is usually by bus. London and two other cities have an underground train system and there are trams in a few places.

The UK is divided into counties (like other countries are divided into states, provinces or prefectures, for example). Each county has a county council and the offices are usually in the main city of that county. (It’s a bit more complicated than that and things keep changing.)

In most countries, a city is just a big and important town but in the UK, things are a bit different. A town doesn’t automatically become a town when it grows bigger. It has to be given city status by the king or queen!

Originally, the cities of Britain were the Roman settlements from 2000 years ago. Then in the 16th century, King Henry VIII created the Church of England and he awarded city status to towns which had a Church of England cathedral. (A cathedral is a big church which looks after the other smaller churches in the region and has a bishop.)

Because of this history, we have some small cities and some big towns. There’s a city near Cambridge called Ely. It’s a city because it has a cathedral, but the population is less than 20,000 people. Other cathedral cities have grown over the years but Ely didn’t grow as big as many other cities.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, some towns applied successfully to become cities based on their size or importance, including Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham and Cambridge. Cambridge (where I used to live) didn’t become a city until 1951. It was given city status to recognise it’s importance in education, because of the university, one of the oldest in the country.

So nowadays, not every city has a cathedral. There are also a few towns in Britain that have cathedrals but are not cities, including Southwell near where I live, for reasons that I don’t really understand!

Countryside
I just wanted to mention this word because some people confuse it with “village”. Countryside means the areas outside the towns and cities where there are fields, farms and forests. In the UK, it’s the green bits! There is a lot of green in the countryside because we have plenty of rain! Sometimes we say just “country” instead of “countryside”.

So “countryside” is not the same as “village”. The villages are in the countryside and are considered to be part of the countryside. When we say somebody lives in the countryside, we probably mean they live in a village surrounded by countryside. It’s also possible that they live on a farm.

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