The ''Zeilendorf'' (plural: ''Zeilendörfer'') is one of the historical types of
village
A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
that emerged in Central Europe and consists of a single row of houses () or farmsteads arranged in a regular and linear fashion. ''Zeilendörfer'' tend to occur as a result of the terrain and often lie on the edge of broad valleys. The individual house plots are arranged along a village street and have strips of farmland adjacent to the dwelling. It is a type of
linear village
In mathematics, the term ''linear'' is used in two distinct senses for two different properties:
* linearity of a '' function'' (or '' mapping'');
* linearity of a ''polynomial''.
An example of a linear function is the function defined by f(x)= ...
.
The farmsteads of these rural settlement types are strictly linear, because they run alongside a
track or a small or larger
watercourse
A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...
. They can be viewed as one half of an ''
Angerdorf
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An ''Angerdorf'' (plural: ''Angerdörfer'') is a type of village that is characterised by the houses and farmsteads being laid out around a central grassed area, the ''anger'' (from the Old High German ''angar'' =pasture or grassy place ...
'' or small ''
Straßendorf'' that has been bisected longitudinally.
The ''Zeilendorf'' differs from the ''
Reihendorf
The ''Reihendorf'' (, "row village" or ribbon development, plural: ''Reihendörfer'') or ''Hufendorf'' (, "oxgang village") is the name used of a particular form of linear settlement in German-speaking countries that is characterized by rows of ho ...
'' or ''
Hufendörfer'' mainly because of its regularity and the close proximity of adjacent dwellings as well as its generally small size.
Whether
front garden
On a residential area, a front yard (United States, Canada, Australia) or front garden (United Kingdom, Europe) is the portion of land between the street and the front of the house. If it is covered in grass, it may be referred to as a front lawn. ...
s are laid in front of the row of houses in a ''Zeilendorf'', depends on regional tradition. Many narrow ''Zeilendörfer'' could develop into an ''Angerdorf'' through further building (e. g. Jetzles near
Vitis
''Vitis'' (grapevine) is a genus of 81 accepted species of vining plants in the flowering plant family Vitaceae. The genus consists of species predominantly from the Northern Hemisphere. It is economically important as the source of grapes, bot ...
) or into a larger ''Reihendorf'' (e. g.
Kirchschlag near
Linz
Linz (Pronunciation: , ; ) is the capital of Upper Austria and List of cities and towns in Austria, third-largest city in Austria. Located on the river Danube, the city is in the far north of Austria, south of the border with the Czech Repub ...
). If the single line of settlement at the heart of the settlement was extended on the other side of the river or stream, the strips of land belonging to the farms would face one another on either side of the village street.
If the elongated
arable fields behind a single- or two-row village had a width of less than about 10 metres (which often used to happen as a result of inheritance division), they are known in the Upper German language area as ''Streifenparzellen'' ("strip plots") or ''Riemenparzellen'' ("belt plots"). Through combining plots and
land amelioration more economically viable plots of land could be formed.
Relatively elongated ''Zeilendörfer'' often develop along
river
A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...
s, whose frequently
flooding
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant concern in agriculture, civi ...
required the construction of the village street immediately on the edge of the
river terrace
Fluvial terraces are elongated terraces that flank the sides of floodplains and fluvial valleys all over the world. They consist of a relatively level strip of land, called a "tread", separated from either an adjacent floodplain, other fluvial t ...
, where agriculture was in any case restricted to one side. Such an example is
Spillern on the
Danube
The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...
(see 2nd external link), where the single row of houses was not expanded into two rows until recent decades when it became a ''
Straßendorf''. A saying from earlier times is that in Spillern "the geese are only fried on one side."
Through the construction of the
railway
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
embankment in 1841, the side facing the river was made flood-proof and the former back doors (''Hintauswege'') now face the country road built soon after the construction of the railway, whilst on the river side, a branch of the Danube silted up.
External links
Linear forms of settlement in Thuringia
{{Authority control
Types of village