Publisher's Weekly Review
In this intriguing travelogue, historian Green (London: A Travel Guide Through Time) explores eight British settlements that "exist only as a shadow of their former selves." The lives of some villagers, such as the inhabitants of Skara Brae, an archaeological site dating to the third century BCE on the Orkney Islands, remain mysterious despite the discovery of beads, paint pots, bed frames, and other artifacts. Other ruins figure in modern rivalries, such as the dispute between amateur archaeologist Stuart Wilson and professionals over whether he discovered the lost medieval city of Trellech in a Welsh field in the early 2000s. In some cases, the reasons for a site's abandonment remain murky; in others, however, they're crystal clear. In 1942, 750 villagers in Breckland, East Anglia, were relocated in order to establish a military training area, and in the 1960s, the Welsh town of Capel Celyn (the "Village of the Dammed") was flooded to create a reservoir for Liverpool. The last ruins of the medieval city of Dunwich collapsed into the North Sea in 1922--a fate that will be increasingly common, Green warns, as climate change worsens. Full of evocative imagery and fascinating lore, this vibrant account eulogizes the past and issues a stark warning for the future. Illus. (July)
Guardian Review
Matthew Green first heard about Dunwich, the drowned medieval city off the Suffolk coast, in 2016 during a period of instability and "emotional turmoil" in his life, when his father died and his wife left him. "I was determined to discover how our country has come to be shaped by absences," writes Green, "just as my life had come to be defined by what was no longer there." Dunwich, once a major port of 5,000 people and the capital city of Saxon East Anglia, fell victim to coastal erosion. Of its seven parish churches, All Saints was the last to succumb. Its tower collapsed into the sea, together with the cliff on which it was built, in 1922, "amid a waterfall of dead men's bones on to the beach below". But as Green says, and his book splendidly demonstrates, "what has disappeared beneath sea can rebuild itself in the mind". Since the 13th century, when the Suffolk coastline by Dunwich began to be seriously gnawed by the waves, thousands of settlements have disappeared from our maps. It is the untold story of these lost communities - "Britain's shadow topography" - that has become Green's obsession. He disinters their rich history and reimagines the lives of those who walked their streets, revealing "tales of human perseverance, obsession, resistance and reconciliation". By doing so, he makes tangible the tragedy of their loss and the threat we all face from the climate crisis on these storm-tossed islands. More than 4,000 villages in Britain are at risk of catastrophic flooding in the next two decades: "Britain has some of the fastest disappearing cliffs in Europe." Parts of London could be underwater by the end of this century. By then large areas of Britain might be "more shadow than land". Green, a historian and author specialising in the history of the capital, takes his reader on a tour of eight communities that fell victim to forces of nature, changes in economic circumstances or deliberate destruction, as in Capel Celyn, Wales - drowned beneath a reservoir - and Stanford, Norfolk - requisitioned by the military as a training area. He begins at windswept Skara Brae, Orkney, a 5,000-year-old settlement that emerged from beneath the sand after a terrible storm in 1850. This neolithic Pompeii is "one of the oldest built structures anywhere on the planet", more ancient than Stonehenge or the pyramids of Egypt. It has provided archaeologists with a key to unlocking the mysteries of how our ancestors lived at the dawn of civilisation. The first houses were built around 3200BC, when the village was a mile from the sea; now it is on the shoreline. The idea of successive generations living in the same homes, cheek-by-jowl with their neighbours, was "positively revolutionary" in these islands. Occupied for many centuries by about a hundred people, Skara Brae was "a tiny beehive of activity bored into the earth, a commune". Mystery surrounds why its people left. Perhaps an apocalyptic storm in 2500BC buried the settlement in a tsunami of sand. They could have succumbed to pillaging invaders or disease. Or, as the climate became colder and wetter and the sea began encroaching on the land, perhaps people moved to greener pastures. No one knows. Green's journey leads him onwards to the site of the lost medieval settlement of Trellech in Monmouthshire. In 2005, an amateur archaeologist, Stuart Wilson (a "Welsh Indiana Jones"), gambled a small fortune buying a field beneath which he believed lay what had been the largest city in Wales. It has since become, Green says, "one of the longest-running and most democratic digs in British history". Wilson believes Trellech was the same physical size as London in the 13th century. Professional archaeologists are not so sure, however, turning up their noses at someone they regard as a "roguish amateur bypassing the rigours of academia". Green explores both sides of the argument, delving into the history of this important community and its meteoric rise as a centre for iron working, in particular the production of weapons for the English ruler of the region, Richard de Clare: "from the anvils of Trellech came swords to plunge into the hearts of enemies". Wharram Percy in the Yorkshire Wolds is one of Europe's most famous deserted villages. Established in around AD850 and occupied for about 600 years, all that remains of it now is a ruined church and a field of bumpy grass bounded by a ditch. Beneath the grass are the remains of at least 40 peasant homes. As Green walks around it, he feels "a compulsive desire to explore their domestic world, to be there as the people woke to bury a relative, sprang from a straw mattress on a saint's bacchanal, or faced the monotony of tilling the fields". The village persisted despite Scottish raids and the Black Death of 1348, which wiped out 40% of England's population. But ultimately it succumbed to sheep. The inhabitants were evicted in the 15th century to allow the landowner to create enclosed pasture fields for grazing. Henry James visited Dunwich at the turn of the last century, soaking up the "desolate, exquisite" atmosphere, and observed with typical acuity that "there is a presence in what is missing, there is history in there being so little". As Green's book so eloquently shows, people are drawn to these places because they are poignant reminders of the transitory nature of our own much-loved homes and communities. He writes: "In the lost village, we see the gently falling sand of the hourglass, or the turning of the earth."
Booklist Review
Ghost towns figure in the popular history of the American West, but as Green (London, 2016) documents, there are more ancient parallels in Great Britain. Take, for instance, the Suffolk seaside town of Dunwich, once the thriving capital of East Anglia. Starting in the thirteenth century, several violent storms eroded the cliffside, causing parish churches to slip into the sea, one by one, the last ruin clinging to a precipice into the Victorian era before it, too, collapsed. Other towns vanished as plague raged in the fourteenth century. From 1316 to 1356, the population of the town of Hale in Northamptonshire virtually evaporated. Remote Hirta in the Outer Hebrides survived as a tourist destination until abandoned in 1930 due to citizens' mysterious deaths, perhaps caused by soil contamination. Dorset's Tyneham was a proper English village till compulsorily abandoned in 1943, repurposed as a training ground for British troops. As much as possible, Green puts readers in touch with these sites and their special cultures, now all forsaken.
Library Journal Review
First-time author Green's haunting travelogue through Britain's disappeared places is both an examination of the historical forces that led to their abandonment and a meditation on the presence of absence in physical and emotional landscapes. From the Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae in Scotland's Orkney Isles, nearly perfectly preserved beneath the coastal sands, to the Welsh village of Capel Celyn, drowned beneath the waters of a reservoir, Green skillfully imagines what life was like in each location before its demise. He contrasts visions of vitality with the melancholy stillness of each site's present state. In the 13th century destruction of Winchelsea, a once-prosperous port swallowed up by encroaching tides, Green sees a timely warning of environmental disaster, while the poignant story of Wharram Percy--a village that faded away in the years after the plague--serves as a reminder of how world events can upend local economies. In each case, Green evokes the deep loss felt by the displaced as livelihoods, traditions, and cultures disappeared along with the communities that supported them. VERDICT Through these slices of British history, Green has woven a moving exploration of impermanence, memory, and the hypnotic allure of the past.--Sara Shreve
