The next piece of information I collected was the location map this was given to the class in the form of a rough copy with the basic settlement aerial diagram this was then filled in whilst on the field trip. I was then given a best copy to this copy I added the order of the shops i.e. high order, middle order or low order. This was very useful because it is one of the most conclusive pieces of evidence; it is the clearest way to show whether a settlement is a town or a village. For example you are not likely to find many high order shops or services in a village but you are more likely to find these services in a town. Whilst we were on the field trip pupils were asked to ask a few people in the village to fill in a questionnaire. The data from all the questionnaires was colleted and a handout produced with the % of people who answered each question. This is also a very important piece of evidence because it shows the thoughts of residents and visitors. Although this was a very useful piece of information it would have been better to ask people at different times of the day to get more of an all round opinion of residents and visitors. I also did a traffic survey for 5 minutes to get an idea of the types of traffic flow through the village, again it would have been useful to do this survey at different times of the day to get a better idea of the traffic trends. I did the data collecting by standing by three busiest roads in East Leake and tallying in a table what kind of vehicles were coming through East Leake. The reasons why I did three traffic survey results is so I can compare them and find the busiest spot in East Leake this will also help me prove my prediction which is that the busiest part will be the junction at main street and Gotham road because both Nottingham and Loughborough join up here. I stood at the same point for 5 minutes and wrote down my results. The reason I stood there for 5 minutes was so I had time to write down lost of cars and get plenty of results. With the data I collected I put it into three tables, so now I am able to produce three graphs to represent traffic in East Leake. I didn’t have any problems with this data collecting because all I had to do was stand and write my results down in my tally tables. If I did this differently then I would stand at maybe some different roads to get even more results. Or I could go on a different day and compare my traffic surveys with each other to find out the busiest day, this would mean I would get a wider range of results making the end results more accurate and a lot better.
I have collected the traffic data because now I can see what traffic goes through east Leake and where it goes through the most.
You can view my results at the end if my traffic survey.
Below are neater results:
From the Internet I found some aerial photos of the settlement these are useful to compare the size of settlements. Using the census website I was able to get access to population figures for the Leake Area (West Leake, East Leake, Costock etc) this was useful information to compare settlement figures.
Questionnaire
Whilst on the field trip each pupil had to ask people to fill in a questionnaire, this data was turned into a graph. Next I will show the results using various graphs and charts, this will be the opinion of residents and visitors to the settlement. This will be evidence to answer the “Is East Leake A Village Or A Town” question.
As you can see on the road map on the next page the majority of shops and services are low order. This would indicate East Leake was a village because it lack enough high order shops and services
Data Presentation
Now I will annotate my pictures of the village to add to the evidence to answer the question “Is East Leake A Town Or A Village”
The Church
The Old Bake House
Census Figures
I visited the census website and searched for and East leake postcode this then brings up the figures for the Leake Area (as shown below).
I am going to compare the number of households in East Leake to Loughborough.
In Leake there were 2,487 households in 2001, whereas in Loughborough the Charnwood borough there is nearly 61000 households although this includes lots of areas not usually associated with Loughborough we can clearly see the size difference In the two settlements.
As you can see from the map above Loughborough is approximately twice the size of East leake and has the main road A6 running through it, it also has a train station. East Leake doesn’t have these major transport links so this adds to the evidence East Leake is a village.
The aerial photo below show East Leake as you can see it is not densely populated there is quite a lot of green land I will compare this image to one of Loughborough.
This aerial photo shows Loughborough it is much more densely populated, there are more commercial buildings and less Greenland this would indicate East Leake is a Village
Conclusion
After reading through all the evidence I have presented I strongly feel East Leake is a Village. The main factor in my decision was the settlement size; East Leake is in my opinion to small to be a town. It lacks the major shops and services normally associated with a town, even though East Leake has a few high order shops and services there are not enough to prove East Leake is a town. Also the appearance of East Leake in general would suggest a village the settlement is very rural there are lots of open spaces. For example the church is set back from the road with only a couple of buildings around it, in a town buildings tend to be more densely packed in. Although the doctors area is quite pedestrianised this is the only area of the village designed in this way therefore I believe this is not conclusive evidence to prove East Leake is a Town. The questionnaire was also a key piece of evidence as this is the opinion of the public. Just over ¾ of the people asked thought East Leake was a village. Over 1/3 of the people asked thought East Leake’s population was too small to be that of a town. This is very conclusive evidence East Leake is a village because of the strong majority of people who thought East Leake was a village. Also the fact that people had to leave the settlement would show there weren’t the needed facilities and shops needed to keep people in the village, therefore people had to leave the settlement to go to nearby towns. If I were to repeat this piece of coursework I would visit other villages and complete the survey to compare against East Leake, I would also visit Loughborough and complete street maps and questionnaires on the area to compare against East Leake.