"The average village size in 1086 was around 150 inhabitants.
According to the Oxford evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar, 150 is also the maximum amount of friends you can conceivably juggle, because the number has been hard-wired into the human mind over the millennia.
Dunbar's two criteria for his broad definition of friendship are: you must be willing to lend one of these friends £5, and you must contact them at least once a year.
With more than 150 inhabitants, communities - or group of friends - grow too large and fall apart. At 150 or below, everyone knows everyone else and is prepared, in theory, to fight for them".
How England made the English by Harry Mount
Publisher: Penguin Books, 2013
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