ABSTRACT
The traditional history of kings and queens, statesmen and acts of parliament, battlefields and foreign treaties has to some extent been elbowed out to make room for local history. The chief importance of the Walter Christaller model for the local historian is that it provides a theoretical framework for investigating spatial relationships. Ptolemic model which suggests a linear hierarchy of settlement, the Christaller model emphases the stepped and overlapping nature of settlement hierarchy. Ptolemic model in which the levels of settlement or organisation rotate in strict hierarchical order, the Christaller model allows settlements of different levels to be intermingled, with lower order settlements adjoining higher order settlements. The notion of local solidarity is strongly represented in popular culture and evidence for the displaying of local solidarity is scattered throughout the literature of the nineteenth century. One of the most amusing examples is a cartoon drawn by the well-known illustrator John Leech, published in the satirical magazine Punch in the 1850s.
