GCSE Coursework: History Around Us - eRiding

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History Around Us – The deserted medieval village of Wharram PercyHypothesis 4: The village was abandoned because there was a shortage of water on the site.Evidence forWater is a rare commodity on the Wolds:streams often flow underground beneath thechalk.Dams had to be built at Wharram Percy fromthe 9 th Century AD. This created a pondwhere people collected water for cooking anddrinking and watered their animals. Thewater was also used to power the mill.By the 12 th or 13 th century the water mill hadto be abandoned.Evidence againstThe Beck at Wharram Percy is fed by undergroundsprings.The pond is still at Wharram Percy, filled with water.Farmers regularly repaired the dam until the 19 th century.Water from the springs was still being used to supplyother settlements until 1935.During the construction of the Burdale railway tunnel inthe 1850s a pumping engine had to be set up to pumpwater from underground to allow the tunnel to be built.You can use an Ordnance Survey Map to find more evidence about the availability of water at WharramPercy, and the possibilities of storing it.In the past, many people and animals used the pond. This does not happen today, so the reduced usemay affect the volume of water that you will see there on a visit.Other evidence--Put your own examples of evidence in this box--22© eRiding 2004
History Around Us – The deserted medieval village of Wharram PercyHypothesis 5: The village was abandoned because local landowners weren’t interested in thevillage.Evidence forFrom 1573 to 1636 the village was owned bya series of absentee landlords.The land began to be leased to tenantfarmers.Evidence againstIn 1775 Sir Charles Buck bought the land and began tomake improvements.The church and its graveyard continued to be used until1910.Evidence about landownersFrom Christopher Hill, The English Revolution, 1940The northern and western parts of England remained relatively untouched by the new commercial spiritradiating from London and the ports; but in the south and east many landowners were beginning toexploit their estates in a new way. Both in the Middle Ages and in the seventeenth century the firstimportance of an estate was that it supplied a landowner (through his control over the labour of others)with the means of livelihood. But over and above this, the large estates had in the Middle Agesmaintained with their surplus agricultural produce a body of retainers who would on occasion act assoldiers, and so were the basis of the political power of the feudal lords.Now, with the development of the capitalist mode of production within the structure of feudalism, manylandowners began either to market that portion of the produce of their estates, which was not consumedby their families, or to lease their lands to a farmer who would produce for the market. So landownerscame to regard their estates in a new light: as a source of money profit, of profits that were elastic andcould be increased. Rents used to be fixed at levels maintained so long that they came to be regarded as“customary,” as having existed “from time immemorial”; so did the many extortionate legal charges whichfeudal landowners extracted from the peasantry; but now they were being “racked up” to fantasticallyhigh levels.http://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-revolution/Other evidence--Put your own examples of evidence in this box--23© eRiding 2004
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GCSE Coursework: History Around Us - eRiding

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