In England, villages tended to cluster around the manor house or castle, and church as the 'open field' system of agriculture spread in late Saxon and early Norman times.
The village settlement pattern gradually spread across most of England as outlying farm houses were abandoned and their land incorporated into the great communal fields.
Devon, Cornwall, parts of Essex, Kent, and parts of the Welsh borders largely retained the earlier pattern of scattered farms and hamlets.
http://www.buildinghistory.org/villages.shtml
In the South of France, I think that village formation followed a somewhat different path.
By the 11th century (at least), the rich farmland in the valleys had very few buildings. The few there were were large, semi-fortified farms (generally called mas - which means "big").
Most of the people were living in villages on hill tops or ridges, higher up on the fringes of the farmland.
This was inconvenient, as it meant a long walk to the fields and home every day. It was probably a defensive move in troubled times as the villages were often walled or defensible, and on high ground.
Numerous raids by various hostile huns, magyars, goths, saracens, and others probably drove this move to less convenient, but more defensible and concentrated villages after the Pax Romana broke down.
These villages seemingly were not defensible enough for their inhabitants, as, in about the 12th century, almost every village in the South of France began to build a castle for additional defense, and to support a 'Seigneur' or knight (who lived in the castle) to lead the defense.
In the South of France, I think it was the desire for greater defense which drove village formation, and this was followed by the construction of castles, for even greater defense.
In England, the open field agriculture system (which required collective labor, and perhaps the sharing of scarce resources such as mouldboard plows and plow oxen) seems to have been a greater driver of village formation around the church or manor house or castle.