Reviews

Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain by Matthew Green

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scooper84's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

tucholsky's review against another edition

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1.0

There are some teriffically interesting stories to be told here. They just aren't very well told. The closest the author comes to this is in the chapter on Wharram Percy where he manages to posit a theory about the black death not being responsible for the death of as many villages as is thought. He makes a good case too. I do know of places from Kent, where this is not the case, Dode for example on the Pilgrims Way but i ca see the case he makes for some of his villages.

lilyreads01's review against another edition

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4.0

Shadowlands by Matthew Green is a haunting and heartfelt exploration of Britain’s vanished cities, towns and villages. Each chapter explores a different place where once there was a thriving community there are now scarred remains and ruins, a ghostly impression of the past. The author explores ancient Skara Brae, Dunwich, a medieval city that has been claimed by the sea storms in Suffolk, Capel Ceyln a drowned place and one of the last Welsh-speaking villages, and Trellech revealed by moles in the Welsh Marches to name a few. The prose is poetic and moving as the author resurrects and restores these lost places in the mind of the reader. A beautiful collision of history, archaeology, architecture and geology for fans of nonfiction with heart. 4 Stars ✨.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

margaret21's review against another edition

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5.0

Here is a totally immersive account of how certain villages and towns in England simply got wiped from the map. By placing his chosen locations in the context of their history, their geography and their climatic or political turbulence, he offers a surprisingly varied set of stories of obliteration, drowning, geological change, historical unrest. Every story is placed in the context of that community's place in the history of its period of change, and offers a rounded, absorbing and detailed account of why and how these communities disappeared. A moving and haunting set of stories.

portybelle's review against another edition

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4.0

If we’re out on a walk in the countryside, I’m always fascinated if we come across a ruined cottage or hamlet. I wonder about the people who lived there, how they lived, why they left, and why the houses ended up abandoned and in ruins. So Shadowlands is a book that really appealed to me telling the story of how entire villages, towns and indeed cities disappeared over the years, and how they were rediscovered.

Matthew Green explains that abandonment or loss could have been because of changing climate and landscape, for political reasons, for socioeconomic reasons, because of human intervention or for reasons historians and archaeologists can only speculate about. And there has been plenty speculation about some of the sites, often controversial such as in the case of Trellech in the Welsh Marches.

Shadowlands was such an interesting book to read with its mixture of history of the era, the social history of how people lived at the time, the mix of theories and facts about what happened to the people who lived in the places which had vanished, and what we can learn for our times from what happened back then.

There was such a variety of places included in the book from places I’ve actually visited, such as Skara Brae on Orkney the, places I’ve heard of like St Kilda and places completely new to me like Wharram Percy in Yorkshire. The book is packed full of fascinating facts and written in a really accessible and compelling way. There is a coda section to the book which mentions places which may suffer similar fates to some of the towns in the book. I watched a short and sobering video on YouTube showing coastal erosion at Skipsea, situated on one of the fastest eroding coastlines not just in Britain but in Europe. It was scary to see how close to the edge some of the houses are and sad to think it is inevitable that before long, they too, will be lost to the sea. A similar situation is happening at Fairbourne in north-west Wales where rising sea levels and flooding threatens the village.

If, like me, you look at old abandoned, ruined cottages and think ‘I wonder…’, then this is a book for you.