The deserted village of Wharram Percy
Wharram Percy is a deserted village in a beautiful, secluded location in the Yorkshire Wolds. The village is the most extensively studied of all deserted medieval villages in England. Excavations at Wharram Percy took place every year between 1950 and 1990 and reveal the rich history of the village and why it was eventually deserted. The village was first settled in the Bronze Age, though the first dwellings of which we have records date from the Iron Age, when two houses were established. By the Roman period there were five farm sites here, and finds of Roman tiles and tesserae indicate the presence of a Roman villa nearby. There was further settlement in the Saxon period and a corn mill stood here by the 9th century. A small chapel stood on the site of the current church in the 10th century. From the 12th century there were two manors at Wharram Percy, known to archaeologists as North Manor and South Manor, the latter owned by the powerful Percy family. The Percy's...