Paul Prescott wrote: > Not stretching at all. With a parish of, say, 200 souls (and many > rural parishes were smaller) grouped into, say, 40 families I'm quite > sure that everyone would know everyone. Bear in mind that most of > those 200 would spend most of their lives in the parish, all day every > day. Quite different from 21st century villages. Although I agree with what Nirvard says with regard to built up areas, in villages particularly parishioners would not only have known one another (and their business), many, if not most, of them would have been related to one another through marriage. It was the interconnections between families in Walton that lead to my becoming an OPC. I haven't worked out yet the percentage of families in the village who were related to one another. At the moment it appears most of them were. At least one rector did take a close interest in his flock. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Ashcott, Shapwick, Greinton and Clutton, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk