Ruins and Romans, Fonts and Furrows. Anything Old in Lancashire

[Lydart]

Not specific to Lancashire, but two books that I found gave me a better general understanding of the Black Death ... (because it affected Monmouth when I was digging), are:-

'The Black Death' by Robert S Gottfried

'The Black Death and Peasants Revolt' by Leonard W. Cowie


A novel which I love is 'Years of Wonders' by Geraldine Brooks, based on the plague and how it affected the village of Eyam ... well worth reading as it is well researched and puts the human angle on the plague, rather than bald facts.



And one more book I have  'Fields in the English Landscape' by Christopher Taylor.   It has info about fields from prehistoric times up to now ! 



I repeat, none of the above are specific to Lancashire, but they do give background information for reading around the subject.

[Maggie.]

Some very interesting information - thank you all.  I'm out all day from now so will catch up later.

Doesn't the poem Pied Piper of Hamlelin poem relate to the death of children from plague in Germany?  No time to check now but I'm sure I have read that somewhere.

All adds depth to the effect of the plague in Lancashire - we must be very careful not drift off topic though.

[Lydart]

Sorry ... but if people want to be specific to the plague in Lancs, then I suspect info will only be available in very learned studies !   I haven't found any !    And reading round a subject is always good !! 

[msr]

Getting away from the plague aspect and back to old things in Lancs.

I have not yet found my pics of the Euxton stocks I mentioned much earlier, but have located this one which shows the stones in their original location before being moved for 'progress'.

Copyright: Lancashire CC

[Maggie.]

Interesting stocks Su - where have they been relocated to?

And reading round a subject is always good !! 

I agree entirely and no way do I wish to kill the discussion so please keep it coming as it all helps our understanding.  I am simply conscious that this thread is on the Lancashire board.

[youngtug]

http://www.localpopulationstudies.org.uk/PDF/LPS37/LPS37_1986_53-54.pdf

[charlotteCH]

What an awful picture that article paints, YT.

[Greensleeves]

That is a very interesting link YT and it could well explain many of the sites abandoned in the 17th century:  I suppose they had just got over typhus/famine/falling birth rate when bubonic plague came back in earnest.  When you look at the death rates in Lancashire between, say, 1620 and 1660, it is a wonder that any villages survived at all!

It seems to me that the falling birth rate in Lancashire  - looking at YT's link - in the mid 1620s is not much of a mystery.  If there was a decline in the weaving industry, crop failures, general starvation and what seems like outbreaks of typhus and other related diseases, it is hardly surprising that people were not marrying and procreating.  They probably had quite enough to do to keep themselves and those close to them alive.

[Maggie.]

Most interesting YT - poor Lancashire.

I've been without internet for 2 days so I've been investigating what my bookshelves had to offer and I've found a most interesting book I had forgotten I possessed - 'The Lost Villages of Britain' by Richard Muir.  Reading it reminded me of an episode in the history of the North of England that reverberates still today in the apparent 'emptiness' and relative 'newness' of the region and goes a huge way to explain the low population of those times and in the centuries following.  I'm talking about the Harrying of the North.

At the time of the Conquest, the earldom of Northumbria, of which Lancashire was then an unidentified part, consisted of an uneasy mix of Danish, Norse, Saxon and Celtic settlements, who united to resist the Normans who had subjugated the remainder of England. The Normans failed in several attempts to subdue the north so William the Conqueror decided to destroy it.  This became known as the Harrying of the North - a genocide that took place in 1069-71 and it proved to be the most fearful in English history.  It is recorded that 100,000 people perished, making the rural landscape of the North of England a desolate wasteland and from which, it can be argued, it has still not recovered. 

cont.....