Deserted Medieval Villages in England

[Puffin]

http://www.medievalhistories.com/desert ... s-england/

Recently a series of deserted medieval villages in England were recognised as ancient monuments

Here is an overview of some of these plus an introduction to other deserted villages in England.

From AD 400 the contours of the English landscape were continuously shifting. This was caused by a mixture of the fluctuating size of the population, caused by a mixture of war, famine, plagues and pestilences. But also climate changes, technological innovations and not least societal shifts caused a series of continuous expansions, contractions and reorganisations of settlements and the rural landscape of England.

After WW2 a series of agrarian historians began to recognise some of the more substantial traces of these shifts in the form of extensive earthworks of abandoned villages plus the ridges and furrows of bygone farming. The study of place names too drew attention to the more than 3000 deserted villages and settlements in England, especially in the Midland and Northern Counties. From 1952 and on-wards the study of these medieval villages was mostly carried out by a group of historians and archaeologists organised as “The Deserted Medieval Village Group” (today called the medieval Settlement Research Group). At the same time the wider agrarian history in Europe was developed and parallel initiatives cropped up from the Mediterranean to the Polar Circle.