And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? ...oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
The quintessentially English vision of Arcadia. Where everyone lives in dainty cottages with thatched roofs, the postman on his bike waves cheerfully to passers-by, and children roam free amongst fields of wildflowers. There may be a manor or stately home historically occupied by a local aristocrat, although depending on the period of time the work is set, they may have sold it off to a hotel chain or hedge fund manager.
While there are villages and hamlets across the length and breadth of England, the Idyllic English Village will usually be located somewhere in The South, ideally in the Home Counties rather than other parts of the country where the weather is likely to be worse or the local accents more distant from standard, middle-class RP. Typically, the village will be ensconced in miles of rolling green pastures and verdant hills, but minor geographic variations do exist. A village in Cornwall might be located near the coast and have a modest harbour, while one in East Anglia might have marshes and windmills.
The local church will often be a focal point for the community, and it will almost always be part of the Church of England. The C of E is known for a certain absence of intense religious fervour amongst its individual members compared to other Christian denominations, so while a village might appear to have quite a high percentage of regular churchgoers, particularly in stories set in the past, this does not necessarily translate into the villagers themselves having a particularly dogmatic approach to religion. While The Vicar may be on hand to provide spiritual guidance on request, the day-to-day role of the church (and the church hall that usually adjoins it) is to act as a social facilitator with things like Sunday School, fêtes and hosting meetings for the Women's Institute. Depending on who in particular in the village the story focuses on, the church may end up serving as a Local Hangout ahead of the village pub.
While you may be able to find an Idyllic English Village in Barsetshire, it is distinct from it, in that setting operates as a village in a relatively contained manner, not a wider area that may contain several villages and a few modestly-sized towns. It's also not necessarily created to be the setting for an entire series of books or set of characters.
Additionally, while Barsetshire is typified by the low-stakes nature of any plots set there, a much wider range of events can happen in the Idyllic English Village. It's such a culturally potent image in British Media that you don't have to look too hard to find attempts to subvert it. It may be an Uncanny Village with a Dark Secret. An out-of-the-blue murder of a seemingly-upstanding member of the community might unearth skeletons in the villagers' closets. Our heroes might discover that the village is in fact located in Campbell Country and face off against a Folk Horror monster. Or the trope could just as easily be Played Straight in a plot dealing with more mundane conflicts that are at least somewhat reflective of the day-to-day goings-on in a Real Life village.
Compare and contrast with Stepford Suburbia and Everytown, America (the equivalent on the other side of the pond), and also perhaps the commonest subversion of Britain Is Only London.
At this point, it should be made clear that this trope is not applicable uniformly across the entire UK. Scotland and Wales have their own nation-specific archetypal rural settlements which will most likely be developed as separate tropes at a later date.
Examples:
- Inverted in Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow. The anime is about a family that immigrates from England to have this setting in Australia.
- A number of Doctor Who Magazine comic strip stories are set in the stereotypical English village of Stockbridge, including the opening of the very first story, "The Iron Legion" (in which the village, at that point unnamed, is invaded by war robots from an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire never fell). The Fifth Doctor based himself there for most of his DWM run, and it is the home of multi-Doctor recurring character Max Edison, and long-serving Eighth Doctor companion Izzy S. (As an in-joke, the name "Max Stockbridge" has at times been used as a house pseudonym for writers or artists on the strip who didn't want to be credited.)
- Captain Clegg is a movie about crime, secrets, and possible ghost activity in the seemingly-idyllic southeastern town of Dymchurch in 1792. Peter Cushing stars as the local parson, a complicated antihero who leads the local liquor-smuggling ring but uses his cut of the proceeds to support the poor of the community.
- Hot Fuzz: The film is a satire on the cachet given to such villages by British society at large since the NWA are fully prepared to protect its status as Village of the Year with a xenophobic and murderous zeal.
- Keeping Mum is based in a quiet English village, where the church is the focal point, and everybody knows everybody; and the elderly and sweet Grace turns up, supposedly putting everything right, by murdering people she does not like.
- Men: The fundamental premise of the film is Harper deciding to spend a holiday in the village of Cotsun in Hertfordshire, only to discover that something isn't quite right about the men who live there.
- Went the Day Well?: The film employs the Rule of Symbolism by framing its village setting as the apotheosis of Englishness that must be protected from Nazi invasion at all costs.
- Withnail and I: While Monty's cottage seems to be located within or near a hamlet with a pub and not much else, the village where Monty takes the boys to so they can buy some wellies is much more in line with this trope, particularly with its tea room full of easily-scandalised elderly patrons.
- The Famous Five:
- The setting of many of the books is the seaside Kirrin village, in which a sense of community is portrayed, and all the locals, fishermen and traders know each other.
- This also applies to some of the villages that the Five visit, such as Demon's Rocks village in Five Go To Demon's Rocks. Near the end of the story, the village pulls together when the disused lighthouse lamp mysteriously shines out, and the villains quietly disappear that night, because they fear the people of the village.
- Goodnight, Mr. Tom: The story largely takes place in the West Country village of Little Weirwold, where several villagers take in Blitz Evacuees from London.
- Good Omens has Tadfield, whose idyllicness turns out to be a plot point. There's a reason the place is so great for children to grow up in, and the weather is invariably perfect for the time of year.
- Jeeves and Wooster: The books are mainly set in London itself, but Bertie is frequently summoned out to such locations as these to help out with some scheme. The most frequent of these is the town of Market Snodsbury, as his beloved Aunt Dahlia lives nearby. The local inn, the Bull and Bush, is apparently highly praised in the Automobile Guide. On one memorable occasion, Bertie is press-ganged into giving out prizes at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School but is able to get his friend Gussie to give the prizes out instead. This proves to be a terrible mistake.
- Also from P. G. Wodehouse is the sleepy, picturesque Shropshire community of Market Blandings, featured in the Blandings Castle novels and short stories. The town is much invested in the Shropshire Agricultural Show, a county fair where The Empress of Blandings is a perennial shoo-in for the Fattest Pig prize. This leads to a lot of Small Town Rivalry between the Empress's owner, the Earl of Emsworth, and the scheming baronet Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall and his own pig, Pride of Matchingham. However, outside of Sir Gregory's unscrupulousness, the town of Much Matchingham is also presented as a perfectly pleasant little town.
- Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders: The idyllic British village is a common setting both in- and out of universe for the Atticus Pünd novels and Susan Ryland's mystery-solving.
- Atticus Pünd Takes The Case, the book-within-a-book in Moonflower Murders, is set in Tawleigh-on-the-Water in rural Devon, a small town where everybody knows everybody, set around a country hotel. It's an expy for the equally fictional but no less warm and inviting Branlow Hall in Woodbridge, Suffolk.
- Magpie Murders is set in the cozy Framlingham, Suffolk, and the book within a book, Pünd's Last Case, is set in a small, ostensibly friendly town in Somerset.
- The Midwich Cuckoos: Midwich matches this trope fairly well; the story then subverts it by making things rather less than idyllic with a tale of SF horror.
- Miss Marple: Miss Marple often comes across such villages and compares the behavior of suspects to those of her native village of St. Mary Mead. Her nephew Raymond repeatedly claims that based on the horrid crimes she encounters on a regular basis (murder, theft, blackmail...) yet always recalls a psychological equivalent from home, it's the single worst Wretched Hive in the country.
- Tolkien's Legendarium: The Shire from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is basically Tolkien's idealized version of this or a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of an English Arcadia with hobbits.
- Played for laughs in the aptly-named picture book Your Guide To Not Getting Murdered In A Quaint English Village, which is a spoof of small-town British whodunnits.
- In Dead Lions (and the second series of Slow Horses), an MI5 investigation into Russian activity leads to the quaint village of Upshott, where a deep-cover agent, or "Cicada", is lurking.
- Broadchurch is such a town, though one rocked to its foundations by a murder.
- Doc Martin: The titular character gives up his high-profile job as a surgeon in London after developing a phobia of blood and moves to the village of Portwen, an idyllic English village on the sea with narrow streets, old stone buildings, and a cast of extremely quirky character who annoy the stuffy Martin to no end as he tries to adjust to being the village general practitioner.
- Doctor Who: The Daemons. On the surface, Devil's End is an utterly quintessential English village, complete with beautiful cottages nestled around the village green, a handsome Saxon church, a troupe of Morris Men, and of course, a cosy pub - the Cloven Hoof. The bucolic facade belies the satanic cult forming under the Master's influence. As seen on signposts as Jo and the Doc travel to the village, nearby locations are equally ominously named, including "Witchwood", "Satanhall" and "Covenstone".
- Downton Abbey: The village of Downton matches this description, with its narrow streets, wide-open green, and lovely stone architecture.
- Father Brown: In contrast to the original books where the titular priest turned up in numerous places around the world, most of the episodes are set in the quaint Catholic parish of Kembleford in the Cotswolds, during the 1950s, where everyone knows one another, are often seen down at the local pub, often hold village fêtes and garden competitions, etc. Naturally, Father Brown stumbles upon murders, deadly secrets, and messed-up family shenanigans pretty much every episode.
- Home Fires: Set in the fictional village of Great Paxford in Cheshire, the series follows the village's branch of the Women's Institute during the Second World War.
- The League of Gentlemen's setting of Royston Vasey is a satirical take on this, a nasty little town where all kinds of sinister doings occur.
- Midsomer Murders: The titular county of Midsomer is filled with numerous villages, perhaps most famously Badgers Drift, all of which invoke this trope to varying degrees. The series overall severely plays with the image, as this idyllic front is usually presented as merely a cover for hotbeds of corruption and petty rivalries, which often result in numerous murders.
- The Prisoner (1967): The Village is actually an elaborate prison for spies, but it's built to look like a cozy Britishnote seaside town to dissuade escapes attempts. Many of the prisoners are perfectly happy to stay, seeing it less as captivity and more as retirement.
- The Star Trek: Voyager episodes "Fair Haven" and "Spirit Folk" take place in a holographic Idyllic Irish Village specifically designed for the crew to just relax. Things begin to go sideways when the program takes on a life of its own.
- The Vicar of Dibley: The village of Dibley is located in Oxfordshire and largely conforms to the image of a gentle rural community populated by benign eccentrics.
- The Archers attempts to make its village of Ambridge reasonably realistic, but can’t avoid being accused of invoking this trope.
- Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully is set in the Buckingham village of Cresdon Green, currently undergoing the early stages of an Alien Invasion. Fittingly, the cast there have a very English attitude to it.
- Everybody's Gone to the Rapture: The game is set in the peaceful town of Yaughton (located in the county of Shropshire in the West Midlands). However, it's become a little more peaceful than usual as the entire population has inexplicably vanished, leaving the player to explore the abandoned town and uncover the story behind this mass disappearance. As such, the usual picturesque staples of the country town are here played for horror as the apocalyptic circumstances of the story gradually become apparent.
- The Good Life is set in a village named Rainy Woods, the so-called "Happiest Town on Earth", in the English countryside. Naomi, having moved there from New York City to pay off her debt, hates it there.
- The King of Fighters '99 features a pretty stage set around a village green, complete with children playing, park-keepers attending to the shrubbery, an ornate orangery off to the right hand side, and smart townhouses in the background. However, in typically English summer fashion, as the rounds of the fight progress, the weather worsens, firstly with a few spots of rain, which turns into a full-on downpour by the third round.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield is set in the Britain-based Galar region, and the player character's hometown is the tiny, picturesque village of Postwick, where both the they and their rival Hop spend their childhood.
- The Shapeshifting Detective: The story begins with the eponymous detective being packed off to the small English town of August in order to investigate a murder. Of course, the game takes place almost entirely at night, so the rural setting is played for suspense, especially once you start sneaking around in the forms of the residents and uncovering the weirder things they've been up to. Along with an abysmal nightlife, a mentioned-but-unseen vicar, and homeless people sleeping under hedges, the most typical small-town trope on display is the Guest House, an old-fashioned stately home converted into a B&B (retaining the priceless carpets).
- Sniper Elite 5: The level "Festung Guernsey" takes place on the island of the same name. Being a British island territory, several such villages and hamlets are scattered around the map, now occupied by German troops and surrounded by several German coastal defence batteries.
- In the Street Fighter series' second and fifth iterations, English rep Cammy White has a stage set on the battlements of an ancient castle — dubbed "English Manor" in Street Fighter V — with a view down into the valley below containing another manor house, a lake, and an Idyllic English Village nestled at the foot of some distant hills. The whole stage is likely based on real-life Derwent Water in the northern English county of Cumbria.
- Sunless Skies: Despite being an outpost of a steampunk British Empire with a Humanoid Abomination for a monarch and situated in an Eldritch Location deep in space, Port Avon is essentially this trope in a nutshell. A lush green country town, it features eel fishers, orchards, lush allotments, a steepled church, and even a typical village green; however, though it's a welcome refuge from the hazards of the Reach, the place is a very Close-Knit Community that doesn't readily warm to outsiders unless you bring in some fresh gossip from New Winchester. For good measure, letting off steam in this port involves such typical bucolic activities as high tea, cricket matches, leisurely walks, and visits to the pub. Just be careful when drinking the local cider...
- Untitled Goose Game: The game takes place in what would be an Idyllic English Village... except that you are a horrible goose! The game centers on roaming around the village, disrupting the lives of the villagers by breaking or stealing their stuff.
- Camberwick Green is the titular village in the children's animated show, in which the characters go about their everyday business.
- Postman Pat delivers his letters in the beautiful village of Greendale.
