> The typical layout of a European village There is no such thing. It presents huge variations between countries and between regions. If I take a few examples

> The typical layout of a European village There is no such thing. It presents huge variations between countries and between regions. If I take a few examples simply from France: 1. North-East would be as you say, a concentrated village, very few isolated small farms but a few isolated powerful farms with walled buildings. 2. South-West would be the exact opposite, almost no village, almost only isolated single-family farms. 3. But in the Pyrenees (part of South-West), you have a more complex setup: almost no isolated farm, villages exists but are small, but by way of compensation many hamlets of 10 to 50 houses. 4. and a few other models depending on regions. I grew up in (2): in my municipality of 180-200 inhabitants, there was only like 10 houses in the village (including the school and the presbytery). In the neighbouring municipality of 150 inhabitants, the "village" was a church, the presbytery and 1 house. A few municipalities here and there had a real burg, but then they were... burgs: market towns with shops and stuff, farming was not the main activity of most inhabitants. In that configuration, people absolutely worked from home and immediately around the home. They would only leave their farm to go the market in a burg once a week or once a month to sell their extra, and buy a few things. And to go to the village church once a week too. In configuration (3), that's pretty much the same. You don't have all your fields immediately around, but the kernel of inhabitants is small enough that everyone has got a little something immediately there, used as garden and/or for poultry and stuff, and then the fields/meadows are spread around still on a walking distance. Then there would be a lot to say on where the cattle is kept and how the houses are built accordingly. There are a lot of variations there. Even just between 2 French mountains or inside the same mountain. In the Alps, you would have 1 (or 2) huge buildings; in the Pyrenees, you have several small buildings. In the Pyrenees, the animals were kept more separated from the humans than in the Alps (where in some places they slept together in winter times to benefit of the warmth). In the Alps, the hay was brought back and kept in a single place; in the Pyrenees, the hay is kept in a number of small barns spread around in each pasture (a factor in the spreading & separation of animals). The organisation can be different if you go 20 km down the river, or 2 valleys aside. In (2) where I grew up, the stable was not always but often part of the house (below the house), at some of my neighbours and school mates, we were going to "the toilets" in the stable between the cows still in the 80s; there are other places where it used to be more like that (like some of the Alps cases I just talked about), and other places were the animal were in different buildings. Plenty of different models, not just one model per country and definitely not one European model.