![]() ![]() The three farms are approximately five metres wide and 15 to 20 metres long, but the manor has a cellar area of 50 square metres. It’s a qualified guess, because the farm is so large,” she says. “Compared with other farms of the same period, we can see that one of the farms must have been the manor house, referred to in the written sources. A number of tax rolls from Tollerup also refer to six farms and a manor on the site, which was possibly used to store the collected taxes.Ī gravel pit alongside the three farms could explain why they did not find the remains of the other three farms, says Christiansen. Read More: Archaeologists excavate 400 Iron Age houses in DenmarkĪrchaeologists do not know why the village was abandoned but they knew it existed as it is mentioned in a number of written sources.Ī letter from King Canute IV first records the gifting of a village at this location to a bishop in 1085. Part of it was probably used to store the collected taxes while the other side was used to store farming equipment. One man, after being clubbed over the head, even endured a delicate operation to relieve pressure on his brain by cutting away part of his skull, and survived for several years afterwards.The large cellar was 50 square metres in size. ![]() Despite evidence of broken bones and deep cuts testifying to the hardships of farming life, nearly half of the village's adults lived to be over fifty, although by then most were crippled by arthritis. Human remains from the church, for instance, showed that Wharram babies had a far better chance of survival than those in overcrowded medieval towns, but that poor diet afterwards slowed their growth: at fourteen, children were no bigger than a modern ten year old. At Wharram Percy, the most intensively studied deserted village in Europe, they have built up a vivid picture of villagers' daily lives over seven centuries. Because they remained largely undisturbed after abandonment, deserted villages have proved a treasure trove for archaeologists. But fortunately we don't have to rely on imagination alone. Imagination may now be needed to conjure up life in these lonely places. Various factors played their part, including climate change which made farming at Hound Tor difficult, the ravishes of the Black Death in the 1340s or, as at Wharram Percy, the systematic eviction of the last inhabitants by landlords who found it more profitable to convert ploughed fields into pastures for sheep producing valuable wool. In fact, there was probably no single reason for their desertion. ![]() At Gainsthorpe, a tale told that the village was demolished by infuriated neighbours as a nest of thieves. Legend sometimes supplied explanations for why these now sometimes eerie sites were abandoned, in Wharram Percy's case after occupation from at least late Anglo-Saxon until early Tudor times. ![]() All are remote: Hound Tor Deserted Medieval Village on the edge of Dartmoor, Gainsthorpe Medieval Village in North Lincolnshire and Wharram Percy Deserted Medieval Village on the Yorkshire Wolds, where the shell of the medieval church still stands. We care for three of the most outstanding of England's 3,000 or so deserted medieval villages, all places where evidence of buildings abandoned many centuries ago can still clearly be seen. ![]()
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