Deserted Clopton

Weather Report

Forecast last night predicted fine start followed by cloud.
Just before 6am it is overcast, windy and cool with drizzle in the air.
Forecast gives little hope of improvement today and the rest of the week will be unsettled.

A suggestion that next week will be more settled - which of course could just mean prolonged bad weather !

Weather brightened sufficiently for departure just after midday - remained dry thereafter with sunny periods and no rain. Still exploring much the same area - that part of the south west Cambs to the north of Herts. Agricultural landscape, pretty villages with thatched cottages and medieval churches have all been reported on.

Clopton village lying a couple of miles to the west of the A1198 and about six miles north west of Royston is worth a visit - because it is not there ! Well, all you will see as a college lecturer once described to me are a series of ‘humps and tumps’. That is to say this is an example of a deserted medieval village of which there are many hundreds in the British Isles. A quarter mile walk along a public footpath through fields brings you to an information board overlooking the site where all you can see are mounds of varying size and shape marking the buried ruins of cottages, an inn, manor house and church. As with many of these deserted villages the fate of Clopton was sealed in the early sixteenth century when the Lord of the Manor decided he wanted to enclose the land for sheep pasture. The peasants were evicted, the land enclosed and the sheep moved in. The wealth from wool export in part explains the large number of fine churches in the area.

Shopped in Waitrose on the way back with camp site reached just before 7pm. Pleasant evening listening to football talk on the radio.

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