One of them is Eyam Hall in the "Plague Village" where in 1665 the villagers decided to stay and die, one by one, rather than spread the pestilence throughout the county.
A landmark in this targeting of media independence was reached with the blackout implemented by the media itself on the story of 34 Kurdish villagers killed by Turkish fighter jets in the Iraqi border village of Uludere/Roboski in late 2011.
Hundreds of villagers came onto the streets to cheer the children on.
Mohammed Dunoma, the chairman of the local parent-teachers association, says many villagers are now reluctant to allow their daughters to go to school.
The rubbish was also polluting the river where the villagers collect water.
Villagers I interviewed complained why, despite a presence of over 100 UN troops in their village, the UN was consistently failing to protect them (there were several deaths in the days before I arrived there).
Oral testimony is insufficient: the villagers always start off adamant that they do not go to the forest at all, they then say they only go to collect dry firewood from the forest floor, and finally admit that some people do take part in illegal activity, though not people from their village.
In the run up to announcing a legislative programme entirely composed of the sort of things the Sheriff of Nottingham would yell at villagers as threats, he had everybody talking about foxes.
Party members have complained about the printing of surplus ballot papers, irregularities in the voters' roll, traditional leaders "frogmarching" villagers to the polls, people feigning illiteracy to be "assisted", voters being bussed to faraway constituencies, and the malign influence of the military.
"It's the victory of workers, the unemployed, the villagers, the farmers.
The Darlington branch of Camra says villagers should have been given the option to buy the premises.
