Shadowlands

On holiday I finally finished reading "Shadowlands" by Matthew Green. As you can see from the front cover, its strapline is "A Journey Through Lost Britain". How very intriguing. My friend Tony lent it to me at the start of this year.

It might be described as eight little books in one for the only thing that appears to connect the eight chapters is the sense that these stories have rarely been properly told. The writer puts his chosen tales into human and historical contexts and given the volume of explanatory notes at the end, you can tell that the content was very well-researched.

Chapter One looks at the neolithic settlement of Skara Brae in The Orkneys. This five thousand year old stone-built village re-emerged in 1850 during a terrible storm that shifted the sands that had concealed the place  for millennia.

Chapter Two featured the lost Welsh city of Trellech that was once the seat of great economic power and influence. Its decline was partly connected with the impact of The Black Death in the middle ages but there were other reasons too.

Chapter Three concerned the  once important seaport of Winchelsea in East Sussex. Coastal erosion and deposition were largely responsible for its decline. Matthew Green does a fine job of conjuring up a sense of its former glory.

Chapter Four looks at a deserted medieval village called Wharram Percy in The Yorkshire Wolds. It is a place I have visited myself. Like Trellech, it was partly done for by The Black Death but again there were other reasons such as the growth of sheep farming in medieval times.

Wharram Percy

Chapter Five investigates Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. Like Winchelsea, it was once an important port but over a century it had to gradually surrender to the sea. I have been there myself and there is very little left to point to its former stature.

Chapter Six takes us out into The Atlantic and the remote, craggy island of St Kilda where a hardy community had carved out a meagre existence for hundreds of years. In the 1930's remaining islanders were evacuated to the Scottish mainland, never to return. I blogged about this melancholic place before. Go here.

Chapter Seven finds us in a vast military training site in the heart of Norfolk. There were villages there and farms too but before World War II the vast acreage was requisitioned by The Ministry of Defence. In the early years of this century, the army built a very realistic Afghan village there - complete with sounds and smells to prepare Afghanistan-bound soldiers for the kind of situations they might find themselves in. They even brought in Afghan immigrants and refugees to inhabit the place during training sessions.

Chapter Eight was about Capel Celyn in North Wales. Once a peaceful green valley it was claimed by the city of Liverpool for the construction of a new reservoir that would fulfil the English city's water needs into the future. In the 1950's the project sparked controversy and a cause celebre for Welsh nationalists everywhere.

I enjoyed this book greatly. It taught me many things and if Matthew Green should ever happen upon this blogpost, I would just like to say "thank you" to him. A great idea and well-executed.