Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
When we think of deserted villages, we think of the Black Death and the ravages it caused in the medieval landscape. However, most deserted villages were abandoned for economic reasons, perhaps sometimes related to depopulation caused by the plague but more likely related to slow, economic and climatic deterioration which made the continued existence of the village unsustainable. Between 1300 and 1500 over 3000 settlements disappeared in England. (Nigel Saul, "A Prosperous People", in Nigel Saul (ed.), Historical Atlas of Britain, Prehistoric to Medieval, The National Trust and Sutton Publishing, 1997, p. 137)
Sometimes the lord of that village decided to use the fields to raise sheep or deer and the peasants had to move somewhere else. This was called enclosure. Sometimes the weather was terrible for several years in a row and there were many bad harvests. People starved or moved away.
During the period of the plague, around 1348, many villages were either left entirely empty because everyone had died or those few inhabitants who survived couldn't do all the work themselves. The difficulty in finding enough men to work the fields encouraged sheep farming. The wool industry therefore expanded greatly. In fact by 1500 there were approximately three sheep to every human being. Some areas which previously had been used for farming were turned into an ornamental park for the lord of the manor or a hunting ground.
We can see the outline of many abandoned villages in aerial photographs. These photos can tell the archaeologist where to look for a medieval village, but they don't tell us why a village was abandoned.
Pottery finds from an excavation at the deserted village of Hampton Wafer suggest that the village was established around the time of Edward the Confessor (first half of the 11th century) and was abandoned in the early 14th century. There is a Domesday Book reference to the manor of Hampton Wafer which confirms that the village was in existence in 1086.
We have no written sources of information as to why this village, like many others in Herefordshire, was abandoned. Perhaps it was so depopulated by the plague that it was no longer viable. If we consult the Historic Environment Record database we can also find a medieval chapel, a field called "Mill Meadow" and evidence of a field with ridge and furrow cultivation connected with Hampton Wafer.
Several churches in Herefordshire were joined together during this period because the land could not support more than one priest and the plague had so depopulated the area. An example of this is the merger of Great and Little Collington in 1352, where there is also evidence of a deserted village.
Some other examples of deserted or moved villages in Herefordshire:
(Source: M. Beresford and J. Hurst, Deserted Medieval Villages, 1971, p. 190)
There are 166 records of deserted settlements in the Herefordshire Historic Environment Record (HER).
[Original author: Toria Forsyth-Moser, 2002]