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wharram percy church
Lost Village Of Wharram Percy set in the Yorkshire Wolds
The deserted village of Wharram Percy in Yorkshire has given today’s archaeologists more scope on medieval life in village and has also transformed our understanding of medieval image of DMV and how they worked in the landscape. Before we look at Wharram Percy in some detail it must be stressed that archaeological excavations of this type are rare for some reason and I for one can not see why more sites are not excavated since, we know that they are over 3000 medieval villages, how else are we going to understand the past if we protect every single site. However, as a landscape historian or archaeologists as I prefer, its only from documents that we are able to investigate the site drawing clues up from the past like Wharram Percy on how people lived and worked.
We know very little about people who lived their lives in the Middle Ages. The bulk of the population, the rural peasantry, were regarded as beneath serious scholarly consideration - perhaps even historically unreachable, the evidence of their lives being lost for good. Also interesting to note that the population at Wharram Percy shows people who were left handed 16 per cent, twice the modern world average. This was said to suggest a `natural' level of left-handedness in a society without social pressure to favour the right.
A study in 1997 indicated that Wharram's remote rural population might have eaten as much seafish as the citizens of York. The remains of abandon house plots and gardens and a full excavation St Martins church first recovery of a large medieval population from a cemetery fifty years ago, by Maurice Beresford and John Hurst. Numerous assumptions were nonetheless made about medieval rural life. Among them was the idea that village existence was relentlessly grim for most peasants lived out in meagre hovels at barely a subsistence level.
Another assumption was that the basic geography of rural England - a network of nucleated villages surrounded by open fields - had remained more or less fixed since early Anglo-Saxon times. New village foundations were rare, as were reorganisations and desertions. The one excavation that, above all others, transformed our understanding of this period was the work which began in 1950 at Wharram Percy, a deserted village. Wharram was then little more than a field of humps and bumps surrounding a decaying church in a remote valley about a mile from the nearest metalled road. Few scholars paid it any attention.
Medieval People at Wharram Percy were living a clean life style, as excavations showed some of the longhouses to be very clean in the inside. However, can we take this as the same for every medieval house? Why would people want to live in the dirt in their homes? I personally have noticed that some of the medieval lost villages seem to have a lot of rubbish left outside the homes. So These people where house proud. The excavations at Wharram Percy recovered numerous items of dress adornment - bronze buckles, strap ends and the like - and large numbers of coins. We learned, therefore, that the medieval countryside was not a subsistence economy but a monetary economy, in which the wealthier peasants had plenty of money to take to market to buy goods for the home.
Towards the end of the village's life in the early 16th century, houses had stone footings. Previously they were built of wood. The ephemeral nature of these timber remains, consisting of small post-holes and the delicate traces of wattle-and-daub walls, required an excavation record at an unprecedented level of detail. Every feature was mapped stone by stone, with the 3-D recording in situ of every find including pottery. Today this approach is commonplace; then it was new. Wharram's houses were cruck buildings. The walls were not structural supports, and replacement of wattle panels implies repair rather than rebuilding Wharram's timber houses, it seemed, were substantial and stood for two centuries or more.
The farmsteads at Wharram Percy dates towards the Saxon period when these farmers were settling down to farm the land and to breed animals for food and also to provide extra resources i.e. milk, hide and horn. Wharram became a nucleated `village' only around the time of the Norman Conquest, with two parallel rows of tofts and crofts flanking a street-green. During which time the village was replaned in the 13th century.
The earthworks had suggested a manorial compound at the north end of the village although, excavations revealed a second, abandoned 12th century manor house underneath a sequence of peasant houses - a complete surprise. The fourteenth century, when the population of the village decline after the Black Death, some properties were amalgamated, and a new type of courtyard farm was built alongside the older longhouses. The church of St Martins provided an opportunity not to missed by excavating the church itself, rare on any archaeological site due to many reasons, and mainly thanks to John Hurt and Maurice Beresford I have now good knowledge of what the church may have looked like and also provides me with some good evidence to say that churches in the landscape changed due to population increase. Well that's what I think.
A small timber Anglo-Saxon church (although we don't know that this was the case) was replaced in stone in the Norman period. It expanded with side aisles and a longer chancel in the 12th-13th centuries, and contracted again in the 15th century. More recently that interpretation has been replaced, or supplemented, by one based on changing liturgical requirements. Side aisles were built to accommodate newly fashionable privately endowed altars, while the extended chancel was needed for a more elaborate liturgy.
The churchyard was excavated something that I have always found interesting was the churchyard and its surrounding settlements. The churchyard at Wharram Percy had over 700 burials human remains one of the largest lay medieval skeleton assemblages available for study. Many of the findings have been unsurprising - fractures were not always well set, tooth decay was common, and so on - but other discoveries have been more intriguing.
Facts about the village
They was a Neolithic presents at Wharram Percy dating from 3,500 to 2,300 Bc. Neolithic man cleared away trees and cultivated the land as excavations shows hollows left by trees known in the trade as tree bowls The Bronze Age pottery was located on the site suggesting that the site settled by the people of this era Iron Age at Wharram dated from 700 BC to Ad 50 as two farmsteads established, with associated lines of small enclosures formed by boundary banks. Roman period at least five farmsteads in the neighbourhood by the middle of this period. Masonry reused in a corn drying kiln, tesserae and window glass found. Anglo Saxon and Vikings at least one farm survived the collapse of the Roman period. Two small huts built on the line of the main routway in the sixth century, and weapons of Scandinavian origin have been located on the site
wharram percy church
Lost Village Of Wharram Percy set in the Yorkshire Wolds
The deserted village of Wharram Percy in Yorkshire has given today’s archaeologists more scope on medieval life in village and has also transformed our understanding of medieval image of DMV and how they worked in the landscape. Before we look at Wharram Percy in some detail it must be stressed that archaeological excavations of this type are rare for some reason and I for one can not see why more sites are not excavated since, we know that they are over 3000 medieval villages, how else are we going to understand the past if we protect every single site. However, as a landscape historian or archaeologists as I prefer, its only from documents that we are able to investigate the site drawing clues up from the past like Wharram Percy on how people lived and worked.
We know very little about people who lived their lives in the Middle Ages. The bulk of the population, the rural peasantry, were regarded as beneath serious scholarly consideration - perhaps even historically unreachable, the evidence of their lives being lost for good. Also interesting to note that the population at Wharram Percy shows people who were left handed 16 per cent, twice the modern world average. This was said to suggest a `natural' level of left-handedness in a society without social pressure to favour the right.
A study in 1997 indicated that Wharram's remote rural population might have eaten as much seafish as the citizens of York. The remains of abandon house plots and gardens and a full excavation St Martins church first recovery of a large medieval population from a cemetery fifty years ago, by Maurice Beresford and John Hurst. Numerous assumptions were nonetheless made about medieval rural life. Among them was the idea that village existence was relentlessly grim for most peasants lived out in meagre hovels at barely a subsistence level.
Another assumption was that the basic geography of rural England - a network of nucleated villages surrounded by open fields - had remained more or less fixed since early Anglo-Saxon times. New village foundations were rare, as were reorganisations and desertions. The one excavation that, above all others, transformed our understanding of this period was the work which began in 1950 at Wharram Percy, a deserted village. Wharram was then little more than a field of humps and bumps surrounding a decaying church in a remote valley about a mile from the nearest metalled road. Few scholars paid it any attention.
Medieval People at Wharram Percy were living a clean life style, as excavations showed some of the longhouses to be very clean in the inside. However, can we take this as the same for every medieval house? Why would people want to live in the dirt in their homes? I personally have noticed that some of the medieval lost villages seem to have a lot of rubbish left outside the homes. So These people where house proud. The excavations at Wharram Percy recovered numerous items of dress adornment - bronze buckles, strap ends and the like - and large numbers of coins. We learned, therefore, that the medieval countryside was not a subsistence economy but a monetary economy, in which the wealthier peasants had plenty of money to take to market to buy goods for the home.
Towards the end of the village's life in the early 16th century, houses had stone footings. Previously they were built of wood. The ephemeral nature of these timber remains, consisting of small post-holes and the delicate traces of wattle-and-daub walls, required an excavation record at an unprecedented level of detail. Every feature was mapped stone by stone, with the 3-D recording in situ of every find including pottery. Today this approach is commonplace; then it was new. Wharram's houses were cruck buildings. The walls were not structural supports, and replacement of wattle panels implies repair rather than rebuilding Wharram's timber houses, it seemed, were substantial and stood for two centuries or more.
The farmsteads at Wharram Percy dates towards the Saxon period when these farmers were settling down to farm the land and to breed animals for food and also to provide extra resources i.e. milk, hide and horn. Wharram became a nucleated `village' only around the time of the Norman Conquest, with two parallel rows of tofts and crofts flanking a street-green. During which time the village was replaned in the 13th century.
The earthworks had suggested a manorial compound at the north end of the village although, excavations revealed a second, abandoned 12th century manor house underneath a sequence of peasant houses - a complete surprise. The fourteenth century, when the population of the village decline after the Black Death, some properties were amalgamated, and a new type of courtyard farm was built alongside the older longhouses. The church of St Martins provided an opportunity not to missed by excavating the church itself, rare on any archaeological site due to many reasons, and mainly thanks to John Hurt and Maurice Beresford I have now good knowledge of what the church may have looked like and also provides me with some good evidence to say that churches in the landscape changed due to population increase. Well that's what I think.
A small timber Anglo-Saxon church (although we don't know that this was the case) was replaced in stone in the Norman period. It expanded with side aisles and a longer chancel in the 12th-13th centuries, and contracted again in the 15th century. More recently that interpretation has been replaced, or supplemented, by one based on changing liturgical requirements. Side aisles were built to accommodate newly fashionable privately endowed altars, while the extended chancel was needed for a more elaborate liturgy.
The churchyard was excavated something that I have always found interesting was the churchyard and its surrounding settlements. The churchyard at Wharram Percy had over 700 burials human remains one of the largest lay medieval skeleton assemblages available for study. Many of the findings have been unsurprising - fractures were not always well set, tooth decay was common, and so on - but other discoveries have been more intriguing.
Facts about the village
They was a Neolithic presents at Wharram Percy dating from 3,500 to 2,300 Bc. Neolithic man cleared away trees and cultivated the land as excavations shows hollows left by trees known in the trade as tree bowls The Bronze Age pottery was located on the site suggesting that the site settled by the people of this era Iron Age at Wharram dated from 700 BC to Ad 50 as two farmsteads established, with associated lines of small enclosures formed by boundary banks. Roman period at least five farmsteads in the neighbourhood by the middle of this period. Masonry reused in a corn drying kiln, tesserae and window glass found. Anglo Saxon and Vikings at least one farm survived the collapse of the Roman period. Two small huts built on the line of the main routway in the sixth century, and weapons of Scandinavian origin have been located on the site