A Rural Component of Centrality Applied to Six Southern Counties in the United Kingdom

Abstract

T THE renewed interest in the function and importance of l central places evinced by American geographers' has encouraged the author to submit the following account of a survey carried out in southern England in 1953. It is an extension of his work in the county of Somerset,2 which, itself, developed from an earlier survey published in a descriptive account of the neighboring county of Wiltshire which appeared in book form in 1952.3 Arising out of the Somerset investigation, a simple procedure was devised for the assessment of what is termed in this article the rural component of centrality. This was applied throughout six counties in southern England, namely, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire. The survey area comprised some 7000 square miles and included a total rural population of, approximately, 998,000 and an urban population of 1,655,000. The area may be described as undulating