Everything about Deserted Medieval Village totally explained
Deserted medieval village (DMV) sites are former settlements which have been abandoned for one reason or another over the years, usually leaving little but the remains of earthworks or ghostly
cropmarks. If, at a DMV, there are fewer than three inhabited houses the convention is to regard the site as deserted; if there are more than three houses, it's 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.
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. This change of 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.
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
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. There is another excellent example at
Gainsthorpe,
Lincolnshire.
Old Wolverton in
Milton Keynes is a further example.
Further Information
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