Deserted medieval village

Remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle at the lost village of Alstoe, in Rutland England

In the United Kingdom, a deserted medieval village (DMV) is a former settlement which was abandoned during the Middle Ages, typically leaving no trace apart from earthworks or cropmarks. If there are fewer than three inhabited houses the convention is to regard the site as deserted; if there are more than three houses, it is regarded as a shrunken medieval village. There are estimated to be more than 3,000 DMVs in England alone.

Other deserted settlements

Not all sites are medieval; villages reduced in size or disappeared over a long period, from as early as Anglo-Saxon times to as late as the 1960s, for numerous different causes.

Reasons for desertion

Over the centuries, settlements have been deserted for natural reasons including rivers changing course or silting up, flooding (especially during the wet 13th and 14th centuries) as well as coastal and estuarine erosion or being overwhelmed by windblown sand.

Many were thought to have been abandoned as a result of the deaths of their inhabitants from the Black Death of the mid-14th century. While the plague must have greatly hastened the population decline, which had already set in by the early 14th century in England because of soil exhaustion and disease, most DMVs actually seem to date from the 15th century, when fields cultivated for cereals and vegetables by villagers were transformed into sheep pastures, often with ridge and furrow surviving under grass, even until today. This change of land use by landowners to take advantage of the profitable wool trade led to hundreds of villages being deserted.

Later the aristocratic fashion for grand country mansions, parks and landscaped gardens led to whole villages being moved or destroyed to enable lords of the manor to satisfy the vogue – a process often called emparkment or enclosure.

Between about 1760 and 1835 parliamentary enclosures transformed the English countryside as the ancient open field system of cultivation gave way to compact farms and enclosed fields. Bigger, more efficient farms resulted, but thousands of cottagers and small farmers were driven from the land and into the emerging big cities.

The notorious Highland Clearances led to a major depopulation of parts of Scotland during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Examples

Main article: List of lost settlements in the UK

Perhaps the best-known deserted medieval village in England is at Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire, because of the extensive archaeological excavations conducted there between its discovery in 1948 and 1990. Its ruined church and its former fishpond are still visible.^[1]

In Northamptonshire, where around 100 villages can be classified, there are articles relating to many in that county, such as Onley, Althorp, Canons Ashby, Church Charwelton and Coton along with Faxton, Glendon, Snorscombe, Wolfhampcote and Wythmail.

Other examples are at Gainsthorpe, Lincolnshire^[2][3] and Old Wolverton in Milton Keynes.^[4]

See also

• Abandoned village
• Ghost town
• Ghost estate - A modern phenomenon in rural Ireland
• Walraversijde – most researched deserted medieval fishing village in Europe

References

1. ^ "National Monument record for Wharram Percy". http://pastscape.english-heritage.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=62053. 
2. ^ "National Monument record for Gainsthorpe". http://pastscape.english-heritage.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=63472. 
3. ^ Beresford, Maurice (1983). Lost villages of England. pp. 945, 98, 265, 335, 363. 
4. ^ The sequence leading to Old Wolverton's abandonment is given at History of Milton Keynes

• Foster, C.W., ed (1920). Final Concords of the County of Lincoln: 1244-1272. pp. 50–65, 'Lost vills and other forgotten places'. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=53616. Retrieved 31 December 2010. 

External links

• Lost Villages of the British Isles
• Deserted medieval villages and other abandoned communities in Britain