Wharram Percy

Deserted medieval village in the valley of Yorkshire Wolds, England, documenting a peasant community between the Early Saxon period and the 16th century. There are rows of rectangular wattle-and-daub houses, two manor houses, and a 12th century AD church. The village was abandoned by the 14th-15th centuries.

Deserted medieval village on the western edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, which has been the site of one of the most important landscape projects in Britain. The Medieval Village Research Group has combined archaeological and historical evidence to document a peasant community between the Early Saxon period and the 16th century. Wharram Percy is the largest of five nucleated villages combined in one parish. It is first mentioned as a royal demesne with two manors in the Domesday survey of 1086; subsequently the manor was purchased from the Crown by the Chamberlain and Percy families, from whom the village took its name. After replanning the village, the Percys sold it in the 14th century to the Hilton family. Like many deserted villages, Wharram seems to have suffered severely during the economic recession of the 14th and 15th centuries and the later medieval trend towards pastoralism. The manor appears to have declined during the 15th century, when at most 50 people lived at Wharram, and to have been abandoned in the 16 th century. At Wharram, it is possible to see the pattern and layout of the village on the ground a sunken road that runs through the valley lined on each side by a regular system of mounds (the tofts and crofts of the peasant houses). The isolated upstanding church, as well as a mesh of field systems and land boundaries, are visible. Excavations to date have investigated two complete tofts, the 12th-century Percy manor house, the church and the churchyard, and the vicarage and Saxon settlement area have been sampled. The peasant houses fall into the categories of simple cots and long houses (where the dwelling is combined with byre); they were built on low stone walls, or partially timberframed. One of the most interesting features of these dwellings is that they were invariably rebuilt many times on the same spot and in most cases completely re-aligned. The Percy manor house proved to be a fairly impressive building with an undercroft; built between 1186 and 1190 it too had chalk walls but with dressed sandstone quoins. During the construction of a northern extension to the village in the 13th century the original house was superseded by another. The village church went out of use in the 19th century and its derelict condition provided a unique opportunity for a thorough archaeological investigation of a typical medieval parish church; the ground plan was uncovered, and the walls were stripped to their masonry cores to reveal the complexities of their constructional history. The results of this exercise have proved to be of enormous importance as the church had at least 12 phases of development dating back to the pre-Conquest period, when a small timber building stood on the spot. The fortunes of the church throughout the succeeding centuries reflect those of the village, for as Wharram grew from a small Saxon vill into a large medieval settlement the church grew in size and complexity. As the village population declined after the turn of the 15 th century the chancel of the church was shortened and the aisles were demolished.