Abandoned village
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An abandoned village is a village which has for some reason been deserted. In many countries many thousands of villages were deserted at several periods in history, for a variety of causes. The abandonment of villages is often related to plague, famine, war, climate change and environmental destruction, or deliberate clearances.
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[edit] United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, several phases of village abandonment have occurred.
[edit] Climate change
In the early centuries of the Middle Ages, the population of Britain increased rapidly. This meant that farmland was in short supply, and so many villages were established upon less fertile lands. However, from around 1200 onwards, the climate became harsher. Villages situated on exposed uplands or upon clay vales where the soil became waterlogged bore the brunt of the changes. Eventually, crop failures forced many such villages to be abandoned.
[edit] Black Death
In 1348, the Black Death arrived, and in the years which followed, between 30-50% of the British population was killed. Many village abandonments have been attributed to the Black Death, although in fact relatively few were directly caused by it. Although many villages lost a large proportion or even all of their population, a lot of these were soon re-settled and re-populated, especially ones which had productive lands. The indirect effects of the Black Death, however, proved fatal to many villages.
[edit] Enclosures
Throughout most of the Middle Ages, labour was plentiful and cheap, but after the Black Death, labour became in short supply. This improved the bargaining position of labourers, who demanded better pay and conditions from landowners.
In response, many landowners discovered that the rearing of sheep for wool, was far more profitable than rent from tenants. Common land was then enclosed —a flock of sheep only needed a handful of shepherds to look after them, and villagers who were no longer required were evicted from the lands.
The process of enclosures flourished throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, and led to many thousands of villages being deserted. This led to poverty and homelessness amongst rural dwellers, and gave rise to mass revolts in 1536, 1569, and 1607. Most notoriously, the Highland Clearances in northern Scotland led to significant depopulation.
[edit] Clearances caused by International Conflicts and Territorial Disputes
[edit] Armenia & Azerbaijan
Hundreds of villages in western Azerbaijan went deserted as between 1988 and 1993, 800,000 ethnic Azeris and Kurds fled the Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh province of Azerbaijan and the surrounding regions. Similarly, nearly 200 villages in Armenia itself once populated by Azeris and Kurds were abandoned by 1991 as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
[edit] Cyprus
Villages have been abandoned as a result of the Cyprus dispute. Some of these are reported to be landmined [1].
[edit] Israel, the West Bank, & Gaza Strip
As a consequence of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-9, about half million Arabs were displaced, leaving an estimated three hundred Arab villages and towns in Israel abandoned. In addition, several Jewish communities in what became the West Bank and Gaza Strip were also abandoned.
In August 2005, Israel evacuated Gush Katif and all other Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip. Some structures in these settlements, including greenhouses and synagogues, were left standing after the withdrawal.
[edit] Clearances caused by Environmental Conditions
[edit] North Africa
Oases and villages in North Africa have been abandoned due to the expansion of the Sahara desert.[citation needed]
[edit] Other clearances
Many villages were deliberately cleared throughout history. The Harrying of the North caused widespread devastation in the winter of 1069–1070. In the 12th and 13th centuries, many villages were removed to make way for monasteries. Later on, in the 18th century, it became fashionable for land-owning aristocrats to live in large mansions set in large landscaped parklands. Villages which obstructed the view were removed. By the early 19th century, it had become common for replacement villages to be provided, although in many cases, communities were turned out into the road.
In modern times, a few villages have been abandoned due to reservoirs being built and the location being flooded. These include Mardale Green in the English Lake District and two villages - Ashopton and Derwent - drowned by the Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire. In other cases, such as Tide Mills, East Sussex, Imber and Tyneham, the village lands have been converted to military training areas. Villages in Northumberland have been demolished to make way for open cast mines.
[edit] Australia
In Australia, the government requires operators of mining towns to remove all traces of the town when it is abandoned. This has occurred in the case of Goldsworthy and Shay Gap. Some towns have been lost or moved when dams are built.
[edit] Hong Kong
Many villages in remote parts of the New Territories, Hong Kong, usually in valleys or on islands, have been abandoned due to inaccessibility. Residents go to live in urban areas with better job opportunities. Some villages have been moved to new sites to make way for reservoirs or new town development. See also walled villages of Hong Kong and list of villages in Hong Kong.
[edit] Hungary
Hundreds of villages were abandoned during the Ottoman Empire wars in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 16-17th century. Many of them were never repopulated and generally left few visible traces of them. Real ghost towns are rare in present-day Hungary, except the abandoned villages of Derenk (left in 1943) and Nagygéc (left in 1970). Due to the decrease of rural population beginning in the 1980s dozens of villages are now threatened with abandonment. The first village officially declared as "died out" was Gyűrűfű in the end of the 1970s but later it was repopulated as an eco-village. Sometimes depopulated villages were successfully saved as small rural resorts like Kán, Tornakápolna, Szanticska, Gorica and Révfalu.
[edit] Romania
Many Saxon villages in Transylvania became de-populated or abandoned when their German-speaking inhabitants emigrated to Germany in the 1990s.
