The Lost Villages Of England

Locating the sites of England's lost villages, this book describes the occasion of their depopulation and the character of those who destroyed them. Aerial photographs and ground plans of characteristic sites are included, together with maps to show the local distribution of lost villages. There is also a gazetteer, listing the villages by county. The text combines the study of local, social and economic history, geography and domestic architecture.

This book showcases 57 of England's most fascinating 'lost' villages, illustrated with full-color, modern day photographs and archive pictures and documents.

The idea of the village - unspoilt, unpretentious, unchanging and growing almost organically out of the landscape - is one of the most potent in the English imagination. Writers, artists and ordinary people have waxed lyrical on the theme for centuries, while today millions have left the cities in search of the rural idyll. Yet the village is plainly dying. The unchanging rhythms of village life, as experienced with little variations by generations, have vanished. But not without trace ... they exist in living memory. In the voices of men and women for whom the old ways were life-shaping realities. Richard Askwith, an award-winning writer and journalist, describes a journey in search of the quintessential English village, through dales and suburbs, down ancient lanes and estates. He captures the voices of poachers and gamekeepers, farmers and hunters, nurses and postmen, teachers and craftsmen, and demonstrates that, while the landscape more changed than we thought, the past is never so simple as we imagine.

Across Britain there are more than 3,000 lost villages once-thriving communities that time and fortune have reduced to ivy-clad remnants and weather-worn ruins. Echoes of a former age, they evoke a natural curiosity as to who lived in them, what caused their decline. Bestselling author Henry Buckton goes in search of some of the Britain's more recent lost villages: Hallsands in Devon, swept away in a violent storm; the communities of Vatersay and Mingulay, in Scotland, victims to the changing fortunes of the local laird; and the picture-perfect village of Imber in Wiltshire, requisitioned for the nation in time of war but never given back. Combining rare photographs and the memories of those who knew the villages, the author provides a timely account of communities whose stories would otherwise soon be lost for ever.

We see the signs around us every day: the chain cafs and mobile phone outlets that dominate our high streets; the disappearance of knobbly carrots from our supermarket shelves; and the headlines about yet another traditional industry going to the wall. For the first time, here is a book that makes the connection between these isolated, incremental local changes and the bigger picture of a nation whose identity is being eroded. As he travels around the country meeting farmers, fishermen and the inhabitants of Chinatown, Paul Kingsnorth reports on the kind of conversations that are taking place in country pubs and corner shops across the land - while reminding us that these quintessentially English institutions may soon cease to exist.