Abandoned Communities ..... Still More Places
Stowe village in Buckinghamshire was deserted in the seventeenth century, when members of the Temple family created and then extended the deer park on their estate.
The village of Binnend in Fife was built in 1881 to house staff at the Binnend shale oil works. By 1894 the oil works had closed, but the village survived until 1954, when the last inhabitant left.
In Strathcarron in the Highlands Glencalvie was cleared in 1845 to make way for sheep farming, and Greenyard in 1854. On both estates women provided stiff resistance, but could not stop the evictions going ahead.
On the north east coast of Scotland several places were affected by shifting sand. Some were covered by sand dunes, the prosperity of others was damaged when bars of sand and shingle changed their position.
Bothwellhaugh was a village that developed close to the Hamilton Palace colliery in the Clyde valley. It was abandoned partly because the colliery closed in 1959, but also because of a major problem involving raw sewage.
Many coal mining communities in Ayrshire were abandoned before and after World War II. The mines were closing, but in addition the housing was cramped and lacked basic facilities. People were re-housed in new council developments.
Two small communities, Machynys and Bwlch-y-gwynt, grew up among the tinplate factories south of Llanelli. The factories closed between 1941 and 1961, and by 1972 everyone had to move away.
Snap was a small farming village in Wiltshire. Around the turn of the twentieth century its inhabitants lost their jobs as local arable farming was abandoned and the land was converted into a sheep run.
Grenstein and Godwick were villages in Norfolk deserted during the fifteenth century. Poor soil conditions and very wet weather may have contributed to their decline.
There were three iron mines and a railway in Rosedale in North Yorkshire, but by 1929 they had all closed. The miners and railway staff, and their families, moved away.
