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A review by portybelle
Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages by Matthew Green
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.
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.