I’d never heard of Wharram Percy. At least not until I spotted a guide book for it in the English Heritage shop at Pickering Castle. A quick flick through – abandoned village, not too far away, a steep sometimes slippery track to get to it (so best visited on a dry sunny day like today), zombies – and I was sold. I was with the friend I’d visited the abandoned village of Tyneham with at Easter and he didn’t take much convincing to change our afternoon plans and head to Wharram Percy instead.
(And yes, I did say zombies, it wasn’t a typo)
We drove there and parked in a surprisingly large parking area. This was the only facility however. No toilets, no caravan selling drinks and snacks, no picnic tables. Not even a bench to sit on either on the way down, or back up, that steep track or at the site itself. So be prepared.
It’s not possible to see the village from the car park but a sign points the way. The narrow track leads downhill for almost a kilometre through trees, bushes and overgrowth into the valley. Across a bit of a lane (not suitable for most vehicles) and suddenly you’re there.
There’s not nearly as much remaining as there is at Tyneham. The first building to see is what looked like an old house. It actually turned out to be a row of cottages that had been rebuilt several times and most recently dated from 1845. And then there’s a ruined church and a mill pond, but it’s only by the foundations marked out on the ground, that you’d know there were once other buildings here.
So what used to be here? And why is it so special?
Well, to answer the second question first – it’s special because it’s the most studied of almost 3,000 deserted medieval villages in England. Many others have been ploughed over, or otherwise disturbed, at various times making Wharram Percy one of the few that are still fairly intact below ground. Because of the amount of research that’s been carried out, it gives us the best picture of what a medieval village was like. So when you see a picture of an imaginary reconstruction of Wharram Percy and think ‘yeah that looks like a typical medieval village to me’ – you’re thinking that because Wharram Percy is what our idea of a medieval village is based on. It’s kind of the prototype.
As well as being the deserted medieval village with the most research and as well as being the deserted medieval village which gives us the idea of what all others were like, what also makes it special are its associations with the living dead. Yes, really! But more on that later.
First let’s backtrack to question one and have a look at what’s there and what used to be there.
The site was first established in about 50BCE but was then abandoned in the 5th century CE. Artefacts from the 7th century CE show it was once again occupied, though there’s uncertainty about whether that occupation was permanent until the 9th century. It was in this late Saxon period that major changes to the landscape took place. This was the time when parish and field boundaries were set in place and more permanent settlements were established.
Things changed again following the Norman Conquest and the land of what was to become known as Wharram Percy was given to the Percy family. Most of the buildings we now see the outlines of stem from this period. By the early 1500s, after around 600 years of occupation, it was almost deserted. The church is the village’s only standing remains from this time.
The plague, raids by Scots, forced evictions (high wool prices encouraged landowners to replace people with sheep) and people choosing to move away all contributed to its decline.
At its height the village had been home to around 200 people. There were forty cottages, two manor houses, 2 mills and a mill pond, the church, arable fields, various outbuildings and barns, and even a small hunting park.
All of these buildings, apart from the church and the row of 19th century cottages, can now only be seen by their outlines on the ground.
The church, which dates back to the 10th century, was originally made from timber. It has been rebuilt several times, increasing and decreasing in size depending on the population. It served the whole area, not just Wharram Percy, and finally closed in 1928 when there was only one family left in the village and a new church had been built elsewhere. It fell derelict and following excavations in the 1960s and 1970s the decision was taken to remove the unsafe roof and let the building become a ruin.
We wandered round the site and into church before going down to the mill pond. On a hot day the water seemed so inviting, but we resisted having a paddle. There’s no sign of the two mills that had once existed here and it’s quite hard to imagine the activity that would have gone on. By the 16th century, following the demise of the mills, the pond had silted up. It was was excavated and recreated about fifty years ago.
The whole site seems so tranquil and lovely it’s hard to believe that it was once thought the living dead roamed here.
Ah yes, the living dead. What’s that all about?
Medieval writers have documented the practice of digging up bodies and mutilating them if it was thought the deceased was embodied by a malevolent spirit. It was usually people known (or thought) to have committed ill-deeds during their life who would be affected by these spirits which would cause the body to leave the grave and go on a wander to continue the ill-deeds.
In 2017 Historic England published the results of scientific research which had been carried out on bodies exhumed from a pit at Wharram Percy. The finds show that the bodies had been dismembered and decapitated as well as burnt. That the remains were then reburied in a pit on the far edge of the village instead of in the graveyard is telling too.
This study aligns with what those medieval writers were saying and has provided the best archaeological evidence yet that supports the belief that people in the middle ages thought the dead could rise and inflict diseases and mayhem on those still living.
After a good wander round the site we trudged back up the hill to car park. After all, we wouldn’t want to linger too long and find ourselves here after dark now would we?
Have you visited any abandoned villages? Had you heard of this practice of mutilating the corpses of the living dead? Would it put you off visiting? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
The Smithsonian Channel has a series called Mystic Britain and one of the episodes in series one, called The Revenants, is about the bodies found at Wharram Percy. I’ve not been able to find a way of accessing it, but it could be worth a watch if you have access to a channel or provider that shows it. For the rest of us, there’s a three minute clip on YouTube which shows where the pit with the bodies was found as well as having some good overhead shots of the area.
Books to read that are relevant to your visit
- ‘English Heritage Book of Wharram Percy: Deserted Mediaeval Village’ by Maurice Beresford (an archaeological account)
- ‘The Mysterious Wold Newton Triangle: Wraiths, Werewolves, & Other Weird Tales From The Yorkshire Wolds’ by Charles Christian (includes Wharram Percy)
- A multidisciplinary study of a burnt and mutilated assemblage of human remains from a deserted Mediaeval village in England (not a book, but this is the paper on the research done on the bones found at Wharram Percy)
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