Sense of place is for some synonymous with Spirit of Place. I thought worthwhile to call your attention to an Essay written by Alice Meynell, back in 1899. Her Essay, titled Spirit of Place is an admirable example of poetic prose giving a deep insight into what sense of place may be; it does so not by expounding technical terms but by calling forth our feelings and emotions as only poetry manages to do. Here is an excerpt of it:

     Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name. It is recalled all a lifetime, having been perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one living body of remembrance. The untravelled spirit of place--not to be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without variation--lurks in the by-ways and rules over the towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long white roads outside have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; they give promise not of its coming, for it abides, but of a new and singular and unforeseen goal for our present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy to be made. Was ever journey too hard or too long that had to pay such a visit?