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Many medieval villages were abandoned after the Black Death of the 14th century around 1350. There was massive depopulation leading to severe labour shortages. It did however lead to improvement in social conditions. Agricultural workers were always needed bur became very scarce. They could demand, and did demand relatively high wages for work, which previous generations did for either nothing or a pittance as they were essentially serfs. Now the wealthy landowners had to beg farmworkers to do the necessary jobs, and offer high pay to get work done.
An exceptionally well-made film! The highest professional standards have been reached. You have gone way beyond the average RU-vid video. Frankly, this is the sort of quality that we used to expect from BBC2 and Channel 4, before they became bogged down with panel games and "Reality T.V." Thank you so much for putting in this effort. It is important work and tells part of the story of our country. Tremendous.
I completely agree - I was thinking "this is a professional production" and a joy to watch. Thank you Paul and Rebecca for putting the enormous amount of effort into making this style of video.
Definitely they apparently are a team of two imagine with full production financial backing , in having said that between them their productions out rivel time team and their presentation backed by subscribers they have found the sweet spot here on YT , guess its up 2 them , sometimes the algorithm becomes a revenue source becomes a self serving parameter for YT, in my humble opinion content like this is a breath of fresh air , I will see myself out
No. They would loose their independence and just be small wheels in either big business or a public monopoly beaurocracy subject to all sorts of politics. Rebecca and Paul do just what they choose to do and they and we are all the better for it. I am a well travelled native of southern England but now live on the other side of Europe, I shall never get back and these videos are a lifeline to my history life and heritage. Also they are not archeologists or historians, their interest is amateur and they owe nothing to anybody.
Snap - I grew up on Upper Upham Farm - Wiltshire Man did a story about this village on his channel some years ago. As a kid I used to walk round there. I was always amazed by the water pump. Seeing you walk around where I grew up is so surreal. I lived at No 6 Summerdale Cottages - back in 1970 Yes, this format works well.
That was a brilliant film! Like yourself, I spend time now and again walking amongst the remnants and living quarters of those that came before us. There are so many abandoned settlements in the UK. Thanks for making the effort to research, and make this video, I do this sort of thing, and appreciate the effort you've gone to, to film, and edit this video. Cheers.
Paul, well done mate. This is by far, the best mini doc from you both for ages. How you haven't been offered a job by mainstream t.v is beyond me. It's well researched & informed content, spoken very eloquently, is a credit to you both. Keep 'em coming like this mate. Regards...........Urban Geeze.
I know that you all have busy-busy lives outside of the channel -- and you have had to make some life choices -- but thank you *SO MUCH* for still posting videos, and all of the work that you go through!!!
A thoroughly captivating piece of work, which I really enjoyed. One day you may visit Wharram Percy on the Yorkshire Wolds which has an abandoned village; abandoned railway; heritage railway; excellent pub nearby in Thixendale. What's not to like! Excellent, reflective, and enthusiastic as ever. Thank you Paul and Rebecca.
I have only recently found this amazing channel. The production value of this was outstanding. I’ve been binge watching all your other videos. The enthusiasm you both have is amazing. I personally don’t care how long it takes between videos. It’s about how you both feel about the quality you can deliver rather than quantity and delivering something you can be proud of without suffering from burn out.
Another wonderful video tour of what used to be! It's sobering to think that 200 years ago a family could support itself on just 20 acres of arable land with another 10-20 acres of common pasture. Today a farm of just 500 acres is barely enough for a farmer to break even in a good year.
Great job. Maps are fascinating. Particularly when you compare old ones to new ones. You can almost see the history change in front of your eyes. I've always been fascinated by railways - where they went, who they served and why the ceased to be. Compare some maps and there you are. But also...roads - Roman ones. Partly school stuff but also, back in the day, car rallies (ie the sort where you spend most of the day following clues and maps and finding targets). Was part of the factory social club that my dad was in but we went along to "see the world" as well as to take part. So not only were we travelling but also looking for clues - pathways, manor houses, old villages. Maps. OS ones in particular. Loads of good stuff in those. Fascinating.
national library of Scotland has a wonderful system where you can overlay older maps and current maps/satellite imagery and it is georeferenced so you can compare what is around you now with what was on any edition of older o/s maps!
Your stepping back sure shows in the quality of your video. This, in my opinion, is the best I've seen, and I've been following for years. If only I was in a position to be a patreon.
Dear Paul and Rebecca, thank you very much for this excellent documentary!. Also your deep words at the end made an expression. Greetings from the Netherlands
It really shows that you put so much time an effort towards this video. Thank you for providing such interesting and lovely content. Keep up your great work at the pace you choose.
You are so lucky that you can find documents on these old villages. Sadly, in Ireland we are dependent on the physical remains because there is no information extant.
As a teenager I used to spend hours in Banstead Library going through their 'Surrey Archaeological Collections', their old maps plus books of the wider landscape history (especially Wiltshire). It was a wonderful journey of discovery though often leading to more questions than answers. I recognize your sense of wonder as you peace together how places came about and then often disappeared through various reasons, often though not always to do with the palgue of the 1300's and/or big landowners finding sheep more profitable than people. It gave me a sense of place in an ever changing landscape. Now I'm in Brittany and doing the same thing using new and quite detailed maps which have only existed here for the past 20 years or so. There's barely any written history books at all! But I'm finding if one goes back far enough (basically pre- Dark Ages) it's very similar here to England, as if the same people were building barrows, chambered tombs, old long-distance trackways etc. as in Western Britain right up until the end of the Roman era. It's just as fascinating though also more frustrating as there's so little written evidence compared to Britain. Archaeology is now advanceing here though I sometimes feel like an 18th C archaeologist, working things out for the very first time!
I share in your love of old maps and atlases. I have a 1950's Hammond atlas that shows all these long since abandoned railways of North America with wonderful names! The quality of your videos is fantastic. Enjoy all your documentaries. 😊
That was absolutely fantastic, Mr and Mrs Whitewick! :) I can see the effort that you have put it in to create an extraordinarily well put together film! My hypothesis is that Wiltshire has not, since prehistoric times been the centre of anything much - villages there would have eked out an existence on some pretty poor soils so plague, famine and bad weather would quickly move people on - and then the Industrial Revolution happened and people would have gravitated to the cities abandoning these villages…
Some of my Wiltshire family were still working on the land in the 1960s and 70s. But you're correct that there was much poverty and hardship, the 1840s were particularly brutal. My family history is littered with references to removal orders, paupers, the workhouse, parish relief etc.
Quality is preferable to regularity. This video is somehow even better than the previous ones. I hope this new approach is a result of not letting any sense of pressure determine how you ought to make videos. Only if you are happy, your viewers can be.
What a great episode, really enjoyed this, always meaning to go and visit some of these ' site of village ' I see on OS maps. And I really like the ending style you used, a strong message and imagery regarding our mark on the landscape and history.
Absolutely brilliant👍 being a Wiltshire lad, it makes it even more interesting. The editing though, and the graft that must of went into that though 👌👌👌
Never mind about plagues, the old village of St. Ishmael's in Carmarthenshire - got ripped out by the Bristol Channel tsunami of 1606. Only the church is left of it, up the hill, today...
hello again Paul and Rebecca , this video was so interesting , when i was younger i loved rummaging in empty fields for old buildings , you can picture all the cottage's with smoke coming from the chimneys and the people going about their day , i really did enjoy this one , really well done and thank you both 😊😍
Excellent video Paul. Villages continue to change, the one I was born into in 1960 is changed beyond recognition in its function and displacement. The new video format was a huge success, you did great!
Your video reminds me of some of the empty / dying village areas explored near my wife’s family home town in Japan. PS - what an excellent video. Thank you for making this for us!
It has been suggested to me that Shaw was abandoned due to the change of climate when it got colder at that time. It was a grange of the monastery at Winchester (If I recall correctly). The surviving records show a decline in the the harvests over time and repeated crop failures.
Absolutely fabulous, very interesting and I really enjoyed that. Better than your average youtube video booboo. Having done a few of my own videos I can understand the work and time involved in putting it all together. Thanks for all you do Paul and Rebecca.
Hay Paul, farmer Jim here, gotta chuckle at you testing the fence! How to test a fence: 1; Stand on one leg, this halves your conductivity ( pain ! ) 2; Do NOT nancy around dabbing at the wire, that really hurts, instead grab it swiftly and firmly and keep your hand clenched till you've ascertained if its live or not . Will be a pulse lasting a millionth of a second every 1.2 seconds ( 50/min). If you're not game for that try a blade of grass. Get a piece 100mm or longer and hold the tip on the wire, as you hold the other end. Then slowly move closer to wire. At some point you'll feel a small tick which gets stronger the shorter the gap between the wire and your fingers.
I loved this video! I know how much you want to push the longer format and with this video it's easy to see why. On a personal note, I loved the note about new communities and the inclusion of the queer march and trans flag, and thought it was a nice touch. 💜 Well done.
Loved it, quite understand your new approach, ps whilst a hollow way may seem to be only a metre deep, there is probably a metre and a half of 500 years of leaf fall, and natural build up of soil, below the current surface level.
I think you would be very interested in an old episode of Jack Hargreaves called WHY 79 DORSET VILLAGES HAVE DISSAPERED he explains exactly why most off these villages dissapered after the plague and it's probably the same all around the country, it's all an amazing part of British history.
Congratulations on moving to the new schedule. - Waxing lyrical and amazing photography, along with excellent and detailed research. Worthy addition to your channel. - I look forward to the next.
Twenty-two minutes of my life well-spent :) Thank you :) You and Stewart Ainsworth (ex-Time Team) would make a great pair examining earthworks ("lumps and bumps") :P I've seen a few TT episodes where they examine abandoned villages. At least one was because the "peasants' hovels" spoiled his view. Reminds me of the Martian on Bugs Bunny :P Thanks for the hard work that you put in. These are great videos :) Oh, Helo from Australia :D
My maternal Grandmother was born in a tied cottage close to Corton Manor Farm. (Clevancy / Hilmarton). Bupton is in the fields just behind the farm. Several generations of my family must have played in those same fields. It seems some of the family referred to RAF Clyffe Pypard as RAF Bupton. Although in recent years I've wondered whether they really meant RAF Yatesbury. I have a little photo of planes taken at the top of the ridge above Clevancy, the photo is captioned "RAF Bupton".
Great video. Back in the 1970s, I went looking for abandoned villages in Warwickshire. Living outside the UK, I'm amazed that so much of the British countryside is readily accessible. Where I now live, all land is private and jealously guarded with "No Trespassing" notices. Is it legal to metal-detect on those old village sites? If you could locate where the villagers dumped their rubbish, you could possibly find a wealth of disposed of items, like old bottles or earthenware.
My favourite thing about being from my part of Wiltshire as a kid was all the abandoned stone mines in Box, corsham, monkton Farleigh, kingsdown ect...what an amazing place to grow up!
The fall out from the Bubonic plague and landlords sacrificing villages for grazing for sheep was felt across Britain. On the Great Orme, in Llandudno, North Wales, there were three villages, not one exists anymore. I often say to people who wax lyrical over the romantic isolated church in a field that the church is a fossil of a lost community. Churches couldn't exist in isolation and needed a community around them to worship and pay tithes. But there were occasions that even the church didn't survive - on Anglesey I believe it's in the order of 45 churches that have vanished as a result of the abandonment and consolidation of villages. But even large towns were not immune, at least one large town in Wales (Trellech) and one in Scotland (Roxburgh), were sacrificed in favour of towns founded by the English (and the revenue that could be exacted from those trading there), leading to their eventual abandonment. The industrial revolution also led to the loss of villages, as villagers sought the better wages of the cities. Even single industry villages vanished. The village of Nant Gwytheryn (then known as Porth Y Nant) on the Llyn Peninsular, complete with school and chapel, was abandoned in the 1970's after the abandonment of the surrounding quarries. Pantyffynon in the Swansea valley was abandoned in the late 1960's due to fears of a repeat of Aberfan, when it was discovered a local mountain was in danger of collapsing.
having grew up in Wootton Bassett and the Binknoll lane being near, I never knew it was probably headed in the direction of Binknoll Castle. I have never been Next time im back there I will sure visit it. This is a great video, interesting and full of passion
This is a great video, love watching your stuff and hope you will do more in depth stuff like this. Its so well researched and put together and your enthusiasm is infectious!
A really fascinating video, it leaves far more questions than it answers and explains why Historical and Archaeological research is so important, thanks very much.
I love looking over old maps as well, and I love the stories behind old abandoned things. Who built them? Why? What were they used for? Why did they stop being used? What's left? Can I go there and see that stuff? I want to see it. I'm American so there's very little here of any real age, anywhere. Not only do we have a short history, we have a lot of landmass which means everything is spread out. I envy you a bit :D
P&R, is anyone archiving your videos for future generations? Your collective interest in local/regional/national history is, IMHO, worthy of saving. Always an enjoyable time watching your videos. I'm in Canada, we have history of course and possibly in another 200 years there will be a couple such as yourselves rambling over the countryside, scouring the libraries/maps/data bases of the time producing media such as yours.
Fascinating stuff, and a very fine production. The disparity in dates when these villages disappeared tells its own story, I suppose. Looking forward to you realizing some of your future research ideas!
Excellent, congrats to you both. Evidently a lot of research went into this. The irony of making history by researching and filming history, love it. Looking forward as always to your next adventure. Love and respect from Australia.
It's a similar case with plenty of villages like this in neighbouring Gloucestershire as well. I'm currently tracing my family history (it turns out most of my ancesters were farm labourers) and I've been surprised the number of times that I have traced generations of my family being baptised, married and buried at one location but when I look on google maps all there is today is a church surrounded by fields and that's it.
You are obsessed with history and I absolutely love it you vids are so awesome to watch, clear and concise well done.please keep up the good work. From a kiwi that would love to come over and check out my heritage
We have these in Somerset too. In addition we have ancient Roman sites as the area around Ilchester is one of the densest for Roman remains in the country presumably because the land was so fertile. I came across a house which was quite old but built on the site of a Roman dwelling giving it a remarkable status. There is much to be learned from the study of old maps and documents, where such exist, as you have discovered. A very intriguing video. Well done.
