![]() Wharram Percy in the Yorkshire Wolds, the most famous of Britain’s 3,000 abandoned villages, was finally cleared in the early sixteenth century and enclosure continued in England for another three hundred years. With a reduced working population demanding better terms, the manorial lords, perhaps inspired by the Cistercians, filled their lands with sheep. The Black Death would play its own merry part later. The Cistercian craving for isolation found expression in the destruction of villages like Cayton and Herleshow in Yorkshire in the twelfth century, both given to Fountains Abbey in return for eternal salvation for their noble freeholders, while tenants suffered the temporal damnation of being forced to move on. Innocuous and dim as individuals, in farmed flocks their role as woolly bailiffs was well-established before, and for centuries after, the Black Death left its mark.Ĭistercian monks were among the first to farm sheep on the enclosed lands of evicted villages. The real menace of the middle ages – the agent of chaos that threatened communities up and down the land – turns out to be nothing more than the humble sheep. Conspicuously large churches, like the magnificent St Mary’s at Tunstead in Norfolk where construction work was halted by the Great Mortality (as it was known at the time) are perhaps better indicators of the plague’s effect villages were certainly weakened and reduced, but they were not always completely extinguished. The ‘Medieval Village’ label on Ordnance Survey maps carries an inevitable presumption of plague, but the spectre of a multitude of whole settlements exterminated by the Black Death is an exaggeration. It is now used as grazing land with no visible remnants of the village's former history.The eternal peril of its pubs and post offices aside, it’s hard not to view the British village as something of an indestructible institution, but it wasn’t always such a permanent fixture and the threats that it faces now pale into insignificance next to the menaces of the middle ages, when entire communities could be smeared from the map on the say-so of just one person. There was a church at the site until the 16th century when the village was abandoned. The medieval village of Lomer sits in the parish of Exton, around seven miles south-east of Winchester. 4 unusual yet beautiful places to visit in the New Forest. ![]() ![]() The centuries old history of Paultons and how it came to be a family theme park. ![]() Documentary evidence suggests that the settlement flourished until the early 14th century. The site is likely to contain below-ground archaeological and environmental information that would point to the construction and occupation of the site and its relationship with the surrounding landscape.Ībbotstone is recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) when it included a mill. The deserted medieval village survives well, according to Historic England, and as such has a high degree of potential for an archaeological investigation. The ancient parish of Abbotstone lies on rising ground on the eastern side of Candover valley. An Ordnance Survey map of the 'Deserted Village of Abbotstone' (Image: Ordnance Survey/Crown Copyright)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |