Gainsthorpe Medieval Village

A deserted medieval village, one of the best-preserved examples in England, clearly visible as a complex of grassy humps and bumps. According to legend demolished as a den of thieves, but the real reason for its abandonment remains uncertain.

Among the 3,000 or so deserted villages in England, Gainsthorpe is one of the most clearly visible and best preserved.

It lies in a grassy paddock beside a lone farmhouse, and is half hidden between the Roman road of Ermine Street and an ancient ridgeway to the west, now the B1398.

Former streets in the village survive as worn ‘hollow ways’. Beside them are individual properties separated by low banks, with ‘tofts’ – frontage plots that once contained buildings and sunken yards – and garden ‘crofts’ stretching behind.

Some features of this small medieval village have been obscured by later stone quarrying but much survives. The 30 or so buildings – which are mostly one- and two-roomed houses and barns – survive as low turf-covered foundations, many with doorways clearly visible. Some properties were later combined into larger units around courtyards, indicating partial desertion of the village and conversion from arable to sheep or cattle farming.

The well-enclosed paddocks and the cattle-pond were also part of this shift to pastoral farming. The courtyard ranges in the south-west area are probably the remains of the manor homestead and its home farm, with a rectangular fish pond in the corner and the footings of two circular dovecotes similar to the one at Wharram Percy.

The village has two distinct sections, each centred on an east–west street and linked by a third street. The northern part was probably a planned extension, taking in some of the earlier crofts and narrow cultivation strips in the arable fields.