When researching last month’s article on Welsh Newton, a recurrent theme from previous researches, is the shortage of recorded buildings in the periods approx. 1300 to 1500 and 1600 to the late 1700s. This could of course be a lack of surviving records but even without this written evidence, we might well expect to see buildings of these ages still surviving in some form albeit with major changes. Why is this so? The strong possibility suggested by local historians is that our villages were devastated by plague over 4 centuries and took many years to recover.

What were these plagues? There were two main ones and many historians often confuse the names of the two.  

1) The Black Death was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350 and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population. It took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover. The plague returned at various times, resulting in a larger number of deaths, until it left Europe in the 19th century.

2) The Great (Bubonic) Plague existed extensively in the UK around the middle of the 1600s particularly between 1664 and 1666 in London and was largely eliminated by the Great Fire. In St Mary’s churchyard in Ross-on-Wye is the Plague Cross that was erected to mark the graves of about three hundred townsfolk who were buried at night and without coffins during a savage outbreak of the plague in 1637.

One religious institution in the county suffered particularly badly. Flanesford Priory was founded only three years before the Black Death, and even though the house was probably meant to maintain thirteen canons, it never recovered and only ever supported two or three canons.

So we know that the Black Death and the Great plague were both in the area and almost undoubtedly contributed to a great change in local village life. We can think of villages becoming deserted and the ravages caused in the medieval landscape. However, most deserted villages were probably abandoned for economic reasons, perhaps sometimes related to depopulation caused by the Black Death and the Plague but also related to slow, economic and climatic deterioration which made the continued existence of the village unsustainable. Between 1300 and 1500 over 3000 settlements disappeared in England and the local Monuments Record database records 166 settlements disappearing in Herefordshire. The best known in this area is Llanrothal where the church of St John the Baptist now sits somewhat dramatically in the middle of a field. I would recommend every reader to visit this wonderful church to appreciate what it would have been like to worship in the medieval period.

During the period of the Black Death, around 1348, many villages in this area were either left entirely empty because people had died or those few inhabitants who survived couldn’t do all the work themselves. The difficulty in finding enough men to work the fields encouraged sheep farming. The wool industry therefore expanded greatly. By 1500 there were approximately three sheep to every human being in Herefordshire. Some areas which previously had been used for farming were turned into ornamental parkland for the lord of the manor or a hunting ground. Welsh Newton Common is a good example of this with the Knights Templar of Garway owning much of the land and using it as a country house, chapel and for hunting.

The outline of many abandoned villages can be viewed in aerial photographs. An example of this is just below Goodrich Castle. These photos can tell the archaeologist where to look for a medieval village, but they don’t tell us why a village was abandoned. Other examples of deserted or moved villages in our locality include Little Cowarne, Hoarwithy, Holme Lacy Kilpeck and Wormelow.

Today the population of Herefordshire is approx. 170,000. At the time of the Domesday in 1086 it was said to be 32,556. By 1300, this had risen to 81,696 but by 1377 it had dropped dramatically to 30,636 rising again in 1664 to 65,505. It was not until the early 1800s that the population recovered to its 14th Century levels.

An example of population change is Woolhope. A study by R I Jack in 1988 found from tenancy lists that 58 people died between October 1348 and September 1350; a settlement that had an estimated 270 people in 1086 and 222 people in 1377. This would indicate that over a quarter of Woolhope’s population died in two years.

A more dramatic loss was suffered by local vicars, who may have been particularly vulnerable. There was a huge rise in deaths in 1349 in the Hereford Benefices, 56 in this year compared to an average of 2.5 in the 14 years before and after, with another peak of 11 deaths in 1353.

How different Herefordshire would be if we had not had the Black Death or Great Plague. Almost certainly it would be a greater population than it is today.

Dave Hodges