Throughout England there are thousands of lost or deserted villages.
Most were abandoned after the Black Death or other plague epidemics, but
some were lost to coastal erosion or the encroaching sea, while others
were resettled elsewhere when the livelihood upon which the village
relied disappeared and some were even deliberately moved in later
centuries on the whim of country house owners. In this book author Alex
Vincent surveys the lost villages of Sussex. By examining old records
and maps, the history of excavations in the area, local archaeological
archives and records and the evidence of remaining buildings, ruins and
old earthworks, he has recorded over 140 deserted, shrunken and shifted
villages in East and West Sussex. He explores what remains on these
sites currently, including their churches, which often stand alone
today; now isolated farmhouses; ruins; fragments in later buildings and
the sites of old houses and streets that are often just bumps in a
field; pest houses and mass graves of plague victims; the importance of
place names as a record of previous inhabitation; lost industries; and
many more markers of a vanished world. This fascinating picture of an
important but often forgotten part of the history of Sussex over the
centuries will be of interest to all those who live in this corner of
south-east England or have known it well.
