Wharram Percy
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Wharram Percy is a deserted medieval village (DMV) site on the western edge of the chalk wolds in Yorkshire, England. The site is about one mile south of Wharram le Street and is clearly signposted from the B1248 Beverley to Malton road.
Wharram Percy is perhaps the best-known DMV in the whole of England, although there are several others which are in a similarly good state of preservation. The reason for its celebrity is that it was researched each summer by combined teams of archaeologists, historians and even botanists, from circa 1950 to 1990 following its identification by Professor M.W. Beresford, of Leeds University, in 1948.
The Black Death of 1348-9 does not seem to have paid a significant part in the desertion of Wharram Percy although the large fall in population in the country as a whole at that time must have made relocation to a less remote spot more likely. The villagers of Wharram Percy seem to have suffered instead from changes in prices and wages in the fifteenth century, which gave pastoral farming (particularly of sheep) an advantage over traditional cereal farming. The village was finally abandoned in the early sixteenth century when the lord of the manor turned out the last few families and knocked down their homes to make room for extra sheep pasturage.
It is now in the care of English Heritage. Although only the ruined church is easily visible above ground, much more of the village layout can be seen in the surrounding fields.
The site's Ordnance Survey map reference is SE 858 646.
External links
- Wharram Percy (http://loki.stockton.edu/~ken/wharram/wharram.htm) by the former chief guide of the Beresford excavation
- English Heritage - Wharram Percy page (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/filestore/visitsevents/asp/visits/Details.asp?Property_Id=391)
- English Heritage's investigation of the site in 2002 (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/default.asp?wci=Node&wce=8005)
- Lost Village Sites of Yorkshire: Wharram Percy (http://www.diplomate.freeserve.co.uk/wharram.htm)