Lost Towns of Britain

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's hard to imagine the familiar places around you disappearing forever. But all across Britain, there are once inhabited towns and buildings that disappeared under the sea, were decimated by plagues, or simply abandoned - leaving no trace of their existence. With discussions of the horrors of climate change, young archaeologists buying entire fields on a hunch, and hidden medieval wine cellars along the south coast, the lost history of Britain is slowly uncovered. On this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt is joined by Matthew Green to discuss this fascinating phenomenon as featured in his new book, Shadowlands: a Journey Through Lost Britain'.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever wondered why one of Ruan Cathedral's towers is called the Tower of Butter, or what
0:06.2	animals have faced trials in courts for, or even how the black country got its name?
0:12.4	Well, you can find the answers to questions like these and hundreds more in our new book,
0:18.4	The History Hit Misscellanie. It's the perfect present for any history fan.
0:23.3	It's available to buy now from your favourite bookshop or by visiting historyhit.com forward slash
0:29.8	book.
0:50.8	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. We're blessed in the UK
0:56.4	with the amount of history that's all around us staring us in the face and that does create
1:01.1	the danger that sometimes we'll take some of it for granted. But what about all of the history
1:05.6	that we don't see so clearly? Matthew Greene's fantastic new book Shadowlands, A Journey Through Lost
1:12.1	Britain, is a stunning tour of what we can't see so well, what's been lost, what's been hidden
1:17.8	and abandoned or snatched away from us. It's part history, part tour guide, part personal
1:23.8	journey through the UK. It's also a cracking read and it highlights forgotten history that's
1:29.0	quite literally often beneath our feet. It's welcome to the podcast, Matt, thanks for joining us.
1:37.1	Thank you. What inspired you to write this book, I guess, to start off with? Like I say, it's part
1:41.4	historical, it's part tour guide around the UK. What really gave you the idea to write this book?
1:47.1	It was a television documentary, it had a bit part in it and they suddenly mentioned this place
1:53.0	called Donetsch, which I sort of was vaguely aware of but didn't really know so much about it.
1:57.9	And doing a bit more probing, discovered it was this kind of sprawling medieval city built on a cliff
2:05.0	rather foolishly. And the vast extent of it is now molding beneath the rippling waves of the
2:11.7	North Sea. And I was inspired by it and began to wonder how many more of these places there might be
2:18.3	around Britain, not just lost cities but ghost towns and vanished villages and things like that.
	...

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