 |
| |
| |
Place to go: Wharram Percy Village
|
|
|
 
|
|
Title: | Wharram Percy Village
|
|
Location: |
Wharram Percy |
|
Contact: |
English Heritage |
| County: |
North Yorkshire |
| Map Link: |
Show Map |
|
Access Details: |
There is a half-mile walk to the site, through fields, making disabled access difficult.
|
| Web Link: |
Show Website |
|
Facilities: |
information boards
|
Description:
Deserted Medieval village.
|
Review:
Wharram Percy is perhaps the best known deserted Medieval Village in the whole of England. The reason for its celebrity status is that it was researched each summer by combined teams of archaeologists and historians, from 1950 to 1990, following its rediscovery by Professor M.W. Beresford, of Leeds University, in 1948. Many school textbooks have used Wharram Percy as an example in reconstructing a Medieval Village. A footpath leads to the site where, in a valley, one sees first an empty brick building and then the shell of St. Martin's church. There are informative signs by English Heritage throughout the thirty acre site. The scale of the village becomes apparent on climbing up the side of the valley where one can see humps and hollows indicating the foundations of dwellings and the boundaries of gardens. St. Martin’s Church was used until the 1870’s but is now just a shell. Past the Church one comes to the site of the village mill and the village pond, which demonstrates how the villagers dammed the stream to create a pool that could allow them to control the flow of water to the mill, and also store fish for food. The lack of facilities adds to the sense of abandonment at the site; only the sheep, who replaced the villagers in the 15th Century, give any life to the site.
|
|
|
|
Updated: 09 August 2004
|
|
| | |
|
|  | |
|
