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Question: What aspects of Wharrem Percy was different from a typical medieval village!?
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In 'Medieval Lives', Terry Jones writes:

'The excavations at Wharram Percy are full of surprises!. It looks like a neat, planned village, and archaeologists expected to find traces of earlier villages going back to early Anglo-Saxon times!. Those traces are missing!. Even though Wharram Percy is listed in Diomesday Book, the village itself seems to have come into being around the end of the twelfth century!. The farmers in the area had previously lived in scattered farms and hamlets!.

At Wharram Percy the lord accomodated the peasants in neat rows of houses beside the church, and the land was recast into regular planned fields!. A manor house belonging to either the Percy or the Chamberlain family (both had some power over the village) was built in splendid style in the twelfth century, but this was soon abandoned and demolished, and its site turned over to peasant houses!.

The countryside was healthier than the towns!. When the graveyard at Wharram Percy was excavated archaeologists found 687 peasant skeletons, enough for them to draw some firm conclusions about health and ageing!. It is clear that these coutnry dwellers had suffered fewer illnesses than their urban relatives!. A lower rate of infection shows in their bones,and fewer cases of anemia suggested fewer parasites!.

It is also clear, surprisingly, that they ate a reasonable amount of seafood!. This is further evidence that trade networks penetrated deep into the countryside!. And there was very little tooth decay - none in any of the children's skeletons!. In fact, the medieval diet, with lots of coarse grains and grit in the bread, was much better for human teeth than our own!. It meant they were worn down to a flat plane leaving no crevices for food to fester!.

One further surprise at Wharram Percy was a skull with a big holein it, the result of an injury caused by some kind of blunt intstrument!. This had clearly been operated on; the skin had been folded back, the wound was cleaned up and the skin was stitched back again!. The person had recovered from the injury!. Even the inhabitants of a small village could hope for skilled and effective surgical help!.

Although Wharram Percy, like many deserted medieval villages, was believed to have lost its population at the time of the Black Death, excavations have shown that this was not the case!. In remained inhabited until the fifteenth century, and it was human beings, not bacteria, that determined its fate!.'

I don't know whether any of these things make Wharram Percy untypical of a medieval village, terry Jones seems to think that it is more typical than untypical!.Www@QuestionHome@Com