Lost villages of the UK

As promised in a previous blog post, here is the trial article I wrote for RuralHistoria. If you are interested in rural history, have a look around the website - there's loads of interesting stuff on there... starting with my article on fulling mills, obviously!

Anyway, here's my article on the lost villages of the UK:

Lost Villages of the UK

As you travel through the British countryside, you will inevitably spot the odd derelict house or perhaps a group of long-disused farm buildings. But did you know that there are over 3,000 deserted medieval villages (DMVs) across the UK?

The reasons why these villages were abandoned are many and varied, and offer an intriguing insight into the history of the British Isles.

Coastal erosion

Many of the lost villages on the British coast have unsurprisingly been lost to coastal erosion. One such village is Easton Bavents, Suffolk. Once a thriving village with its own market, it also had the distinction of being England’s most easterly village. However, the village was slowly lost to the sea, losing the church sometime in the 17^th century. The last remaining building in the village, a row of three terraced houses, was demolished in 2020.

Cliff Fall at Easton Bavents (c) Bob Jones

Requisitioned by Armed Forces

Several lost villages across the UK were requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence for military training during the Second World War. Some of these villages, such as Balsdean, Suffolk, were already largely uninhabited at the time they were taken over. However, many of these villages were still inhabited and residents had to be evicted. Often, residents left their homes willingly, believing they were doing their bit for the war effort and they were comforted by the thought they would return after the war. Sadly, this was not to be the case, and many of these areas, such as Imber, Wiltshire and Tyneham, Dorset are still under Ministry of Defence ownership even now.

Ruined Barns, Balsdean (c) Simon Carey

Switch from arable to pastoral farming

Perhaps the best-known abandoned village in the UK is Wharram Percy, Yorkshire. As one of the largest and best-preserved abandoned villages, it has been the focus of ongoing archaeological investigations since the 1950s. The village had provided homes for farm workers when the land was used by the Percy family for arable farming. However, the land was taken over by the Hylton family in the 1400s, and by this time, owing to changes in prices and wages, it was more profitable to make the change to pastoral farming. Over the next century, more and more land was given over to grazing pasture for the sheep, and fewer and fewer workers were needed. In the early 1500s, the final residents of the village were evicted to make way for more sheep pasture.

Ruin of Wharram Percy church (c) David Smith

Loss of Industry

Villages are often built to house workers near mines or work sites. Often these industries are not sustainable and eventually the work dries up and the workers leave. One example is Binnend, Fife, which was built near a shale oil extraction works in the 1870s. When the oil works closed in 1892, the population began to decline. Many houses in the village were used during the First World War, as housing for admiralty staff, homes for women widowed by the war and affordable housing for workers in the nearby aluminium works and shipyards. However, the population continued to decline in subsequent years and the village was formally closed in 1931, with the final residents leaving in the 1950s.

Flooded to create a reservoir

Several villages across the UK have been demolished or submerged by the creation of new reservoirs. A notable example is Derwent, Derbyshire which was flooded as part of the creation of the Ladybower Reservoir, and appears in the news periodically when dry conditions cause the water level to drop and expose the remains of the village, drawing huge crowds. Another example is Mardale Green, Lake District, which was submerged in the late 1930s when the level of Haweswater was raised to form Haweswater Reservoir.

The lost village of Mardale Green (c) Marathon

Enduring mysteries

As we’ve seen, archaeological and historical research can often elucidate the reasons why a village has been abandoned. However, there are numerous abandoned villages where no clear reason for their abandonment has ever been established. One example is Lancaut, on the border between Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire. In 1306 the village is recorded as having 10 households, in 1551 it was noted as having 19 adult inhabitants and by 1931 there was a recorded population of 10, but nowadays there is little left of the village except for a working farm. A lack of written records means little is known about why the village was abandoned.

Ruin of St James Church, Lancaut (c) Andy Dingley