Wharram Percy - Peasant Farming for Fun and Profit.

Writing progress 23,000 words yada yada, but you don't really want to know about that, do you?  You want to know about my trip this week to a Spooky Deserted Medieval Village!  Yes, you do.  No, running away with your fingers in your ears won't help.  Anyway, it counts as research, so there.

Not far from where I live, as the crow flies anyway, is the Wolds.  Are. Is.  Not sure if the Wolds are singular, as in there is only one of them but it's very big or there are many different Woldishnesses all welded together and therefore being plural.  I learned, long ago, just because something has an 'S' on the end, it doesn't have to be plural, when I had a friend called Tess, of whom there was only one.  So, anyway, these Wolds...  Upon them (or it, the jury is still out), there is a well-known and much explored village that was periodically deserted.  Not because of plague, although I'm sure the more picturesque sites would like you to believe that, but for the far more mundane reason that the lord of the manor (who I can't help but picture in a monocle and spats, even though those hadn't been invented) wanted the place cleared so he could keep sheep, which were more profitable than peasants.  I think he probably just hadn't got the whole 'peasant keeping' thing down and that's why he wasn't making money out of them, maybe he should have tried free-range peasants, but anyway.

So I took a representative sample of the young people who currently clutter up my house, two dogs, a picnic, and set forth for the Deserted Village.  And here are the photographic results. Pictures 1, 3 and 5 were taken by me, pictures 2, 4 and 6 were taken by Vienna, who is much better with a camera than me.

Vienna and Will survey the ruined church. They weren't, on this occasion, responsible for the ruination, although I docked their pocket money anyway, on principle.

One man and his dog. Actually, one scheming, conniving probable criminal and her boy.

The church. Still ruined.

Dylan swimming in the reconstructed fish pond on the site.  This is probably frowned upon, although there was nobody there except us to frown, so we let him.

Vienna, staring wistfully into the middle distance,  Behind her are some of the lumps that used to be medieval tofts, crofts and..errr...bofts.

On the way back we did some Urban Exploration.  This is the Wharram Percy Chalk Works as was.  Very atmospheric, if you like the atmosphere of terror.