Wharram Percy Village

In June 2002, English Heritage's Landscape Investigation Team began a detailed investigation and survey of the ruined church, grassy lanes and  overgrown foundations which are now all that can be seen of the once thriving medieval community of Wharram Percy. The deserted village, set on the side of a remote and picturesque valley in the Yorkshire Wolds, was first laid out at some point in the 10th century AD and is mentioned briefly in Domesday Book. It survived the devastation caused by William the Conqueror's 'Harrying of the North' and the Black Death, although some of the population died, including the lord of the manor and the priest. It was finally abandoned soon after 1500, when, according to a legal document of 1517, the lord of the manor at that time, Baron Hilton, evicted the last four families and demolished their houses to make way for more sheep pasture, as England's wool industry began to take off. The use of the village's church, St Martin's, continued for a further 400 years, but tailed off sharply when a new church was built in the nearby village of Thixendale in 1870, paid for by Sir Tatton Sykes, a more philanthropic landlord. After that, St Martin's gradually fell into disrepair and half of the tower eventually collapsed following a storm in December 1959.

 There are reckoned to be at least 3,000 deserted medieval villages in England and the remains of Wharram Percy are no more extensive or better preserved than those of many other rural villages. Yet the site has become famous throughout Europe (at least among archaeologists!) as a result of a programme of excavation, survey and documentary research carried out over the course of forty years, between 1952 and 1992, under the direction of Professor Maurice Beresford and Dr John Hurst. In fact, while English Heritage's investigation was in progress, the 50th anniversary of the start of the research project was celebrated with a picnic near the ruined church. This was attended by both the project's directors and a fair proportion of the many hundreds of volunteers who have helped over the years to bring the history of the village to light.

At an early stage in the project, Beresford and Hurst realised that it would never be possible to excavate everything, and  that a survey of the surface traces was of crucial importance if the development of the village was to be understood. Work on a plan of the remains began in 1954, adding much more detail to the earlier survey, whose main elements had first been recorded in 1851 by Captain Bayly of the Ordnance Survey. In addition, dozens of aerial photographs were taken in the course of the research project. The conditions range from low, slanting sun on summer evenings, when the long shadows clearly reveal the slight humps and bumps, to light dustings of winter snow, when deeper drifts highlight the wall-lines. These photographs have revealed even more about the overall plan of the village and the twenty-eight individual houses that it comprises. So by 2002, could we report anything new to all those who came to the anniversary picnic, who had already spent so many summers struggling to understand the development of the site? Surprisingly, perhaps, yes we could!

One of the most important discoveries of our new investigation is the role of changing patterns of movement in shaping the lay-out of the village. It has long been recognised, on the basis of both excavated evidence and aerial photographs, that one of the major roads into the village originated in the Roman period. But certain crucial pieces of the pattern have not previously been recognised, and it can now be seen that at that date, the most important route ran almost straight from west to east, with no regard for what was to become the site of the village. By the 10th century at the latest, the pattern had changed and most traffic was forced to deviate southwards, joining another road in order to negotiate the steep slope of the valley side and so passing through the heart of the newly laid out village. The siting of the church of St Martin's, on a terrace just above the valley floor, but well below the main street of the village and slightly separate from it, has always been a puzzle. The new understanding of the road system suggests that when first built, the church would have stood close to the junction, in an excellent position to impress anyone who passed through the village.

 Even Captain Bayly's early plan of the village shows how neatly the house plots were laid out, so as to form two long rows fronting onto the main streets. Beresford and Hurst deduced from this overall regularity, together with the very consistent size of the individual plots, that the village had been carefully planned, presumably by a landlord at some point between the 10th and 12th centuries. Once again, however, the planned village had to be laid out in a landscape that was far from being a blank canvas. In contrast to the strict regularity of the settlement, a steep-sided bank, built up by continual ploughing over decades or even centuries, snakes its way for nearly 400m along the rear of the house plots, marking the boundary between them and the adjacent strips of agricultural land. Beresford and Hurst sometimes suspected that this bank might predate the village, but eventually dismissed the idea. Our new investigation has produced evidence that strongly supports their initial theory. But this leaves another question unanswered: why was the limit of the ploughing so far from the edge of the valley, when elsewhere on the Yorkshire Wolds, every last scrap of level ground is cultivated? The answer seems to be that the ploughing ended just short of something else; there is some evidence to suggest that the 'something' may have been a so-called 'ladder settlement'. This kind of settlement, most examples of which are of Roman or late Iron Age date, is typically formed by a continuous line of small enclosures, forming a ladder-like pattern when seen in plan. Several examples have already been recorded by aerial photography in the area around Wharram Percy.

At the other end of the chronological scale, it was a surprise to find a pile of large blocks of worked stone in woodland to the east of the village. At first, we were puzzled as to what these might be, but a look at the Ordnance Survey map surveyed by Captain Bayly in 1851 gave us the answer: the remains of a pumping engine. During the construction of nearby Burdale railway tunnel, which was eventually completed in 1853, water constantly had to be pumped out from underground so that work could progress. As a result, the project proved much more time-consuming and costly than had been expected. The railway itself was later dismantled and its remains, like those of the medieval village, are now increasingly hard to recognise.

 The two-month long investigation offered an excellent opportunity to co-operate with our Education Team and teach children from local primary schools about what life would have been like in a medieval village. In the process, all the kids learned a few basic survey techniques and were soon able to produce simple plans and reconstruction drawings of some of the medieval houses. Even more impressive was their skill in noticing details of surface remains that many adults (including archaeologists!) might be expected to overlook, and to use those observations to picture the houses and streets in their mind's eye.

A book entitled Wharram Percy Deserted Medieval Village, written by Maurice Beresford and John Hurst and published by English Heritage in 1990, presents all the findings of the project up to that date.

The report on this research (ref.: AI/19/2004) is now available to order online. To find out more about the research, contact Alastair Oswald in English Heritage's York Office on 01904 601901 or e-mail al.oswald@english-heritage.org.uk

Wharram Percy is managed by English Heritage and is open to the public all year round in daylight hours; admission is free. The site is signposted from the B1248 Beverley to Malton road, or can be reached the Wolds Way long distance footpath.