Around 3000 villages were deserted in Britain between the Norman conquest and the eighteenth century. Many lie hidden under later redevelopments. But many more were never resettled. They can be found throughout the English countryside, showing up from the air or as earth-covered humps on the ground.

Wharram Percy is one of them. The deserted village is also a significant archaeological site, with archaeologists gaining much valuable information about medieval life. They also used its excavation to pioneer techniques that revolutionised the future analysis of other deserted medieval villages.

The Deserted Medieval Village of Wharram Percy

Wharram Percy is six miles from the town of Malton in North Yorkshire. The site was settled in prehistoric times, although its name dates from a much later period. “Wharram” is a Viking term referring to the bend in the valley that the village occupies. The “Percy” element is later still, relating to the major land-owning family of the north of England, who at one time also held the village of Wharram Percy.

The village’s decline was not due to plague or famine but land clearance. Families were evicted from the village as the land was given over to sheep, whose wool brought in a greater profit for the landowner than arable crops. By 1500, the once thriving village dwindled to one farm. But its medieval farmsteads, trackways and manor houses remained hidden in the landscape, awaiting rediscovery in the 1950s.

Aerial Photography and the Archaeological Excavation of Wharram Percy

The first aerial photographs of the village were taken in 1948. They revealed the foundations of the houses, which could be seen in rows, each with a narrow strip of garden behind them.

Excavation of the site began in the 1950s. They were the most extensive excavations of a medieval village up until that time. They were also primarily carried out by volunteers, making them one of the first opportunities for non-professional archaeologists to work alongside professionals.

But the excavations were also pioneering because they excavated a medieval village in a way that had never been tried before: by using open area excavation.

Open Area Excavation

Medieval villages were usually excavated using box or trench excavation. The foundations of the houses were identified and excavated around, or a trench was sunk to give a cross-section of chronological activity.

Both methods were restrictive. A trench could not give a complete house plan, only a view of activity on a small area of the site. Similarly, excavating around the foundations of a house only gave a house plan for the final phase of the site’s life without giving any idea of overall continuity and change over the years.

Open area excavation was more complete. Areas of 5ft square were excavated horizontally, with finds from each successive layer carefully recorded. In this way, house plans and finds from not one, but every phase of occupation were recorded, building up a complex, overall picture of the life of each feature — and the village as a whole.

The only drawback was that to get to the earliest sequences in the village’s history, the upper layers were inevitably destroyed.

The History of a Medieval Village

Destructive or not, the systematic nature of the excavation at Wharram Percy, which continued until the 1990s, brought the village’s history back to life. The life cycles of the buildings became clear and the excavations offered many revealing insights into life in a medieval village.

The techniques pioneered at Wharram Percy have been applied to the study of other deserted medieval villages. But the excavations also helped many generations of budding archaeologists learn about and contribute to the development of archaeological techniques.

Resources

Beresford, M and Hurst, J G, 1972. Deserted Medieval Villages. Lutterworth Press: Guildford and London

Wrathmell, S, 1997.Warram Percy — Deserted Medieval Village. English Heritage: London.