Lost Villages of Sussex

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.