Wharram Percy: The fascinating history behind the abandoned Yorkshire village that dates back over 2,070 years

The abandoned Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy has been around for more than 2,000 years and is now in the care of Historic England - here is its history.

Wharram Percy is a deserted medieval village and is one of Britain’s best preserved abandoned villages as well as one of the most famous.

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Archaeologists have experimented with new methods in the village for more than 60 years to learn more about what life was like in the village and why it was abandoned.

The only visible structure above ground is the ruined church and most of the layout of the village can be seen in surrounding fields.

Church of St Martin, Wharram Percy. (Pic credit: English Heritage / Heritage Images / Getty Images)Church of St Martin, Wharram Percy. (Pic credit: English Heritage / Heritage Images / Getty Images)
Church of St Martin, Wharram Percy. (Pic credit: English Heritage / Heritage Images / Getty Images)

History of Wharram Percy

The village is located on the edge of a remote and stunning valley in the Yorkshire Wolds and was inhabited for six centuries before it was abandoned soon after 1500.

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Wharram Percy was founded in the 9th and 10th century and thrived between the 12th and early 14th centuries, when members of the Percy family lived in the village.

By the early 16th century it was nearly deserted, as a result of gradual abandonment and forced evictions.

The first settlement was founded around 50BC alongside an ancient east-west track crossing the valley. Part of this developed into a larger farmstead, which was abandoned in the 5th century.

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According to the English Heritage website, some historians believe a handful of small buildings with floors below ground level represent an early village, which can be dated by the presence of mid-7th century artefacts.

Other experts debate that these buildings were temporary huts assembled by farmers who drove their sheep on the Wolds.

Between the years 850 and 950 a significant reorganisation of the landscape, surrounding agreement of parish and field boundaries resulted in the foundation of the village proper, with a wooden church on the green.

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Based on the Domesday Book, the two main landowners before the Conquest were Lagmann and Carli.

By 1086 William the Conqueror had seized Wharram and had permitted Langmann and Carli’s holdings to Osbert the Sheriff. The land was then given to William de Percy, a prominent Norman baron, from whom the Percy Earls and Dukes of Northumberland, with castles at Warkworth, Alnwick and elsewhere, were descended.

Robert III’s son Peter Percy II died young in 1315, leaving no male heir and Peter II’s elder daughter, Eustachia, was made a royal ward. The Crown controlled the estate until she reached the age of 14 in 1327.

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She then married Walter Heslerton, from the nearby village of the same name, who she had a son with, Walter Heslerton II.

There were at least 18 households in Wharram Percy by 1334, including the manor and the parsonage. It ranked 33rd of 50 local villages in a tax assessment.

Walter Heslerton I died during the Black Death in 1349 and while he was still young, Walter II, he could not inherit the estate. The population decreased from around 67 to 45 due to the plague.

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Following his death, the estate was passed over to a distant relative, Henry, of the Percys of Spofforth and the Percy family no longer lived in the village.

By this time, 30 houses were occupied and the land which had been left unattended in 1323 was in use again, one of the mills was working and income was generated through fishing at millponds.

Around one-third of the villagers had avoided paying the poll tax in 1377 and were widely supported in Yorkshire resulting in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

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The Spofforth Percys swapped Wharram for a manor owned by Baron William Hilton in around 1400 and Baron Hilton replaced the upper storey of the Wharram church bell tower.

In 1436, the houses occupied were reduced to 16 and across the Middle Ages the increasing price of wool forced many landowners to switch to sheep farming, converting arable land to pasture.

It was thought that the eviction of four families from Wharram and destruction of their houses by Baron Hilton in around 1500 signalled the final stage of depopulation as well as a sharp decrease in the village’s population after 1458.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the names of the fields that covered the site of the village were Water Lane, Towngate and Town Street.

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