£50,000 donation will bring new attraction to museum (From Gazette & Herald)

£50,000 donation will bring new attraction to museum

A MUSEUM in Ryedale has been awarded £50,000 to develop a major new attraction, focusing on one of England's largest and best-preserved deserted medieval villages.

The secrets of Wharram Percy, which lies a few miles to the south of Malton on the Yorkshire Wolds, were unearthed during archaeological activity spanning 40 years.

Now Malton Museum will share the knowledge gained during the excavations, with the exhibition Wharram Percy: Life in a Medieval Village, which will open on July 16.

"The main feature of the exhibition will be a part reconstruction of a medieval house, complete with interior features, taking a quarter of the upper gallery of the museum," said Frank Wiggle, chairman of the Museum Foundation.

"Other exciting exhibits will include objects from the site, skeletons found on the site with facial reconstructions, the clothing people wore, the food they ate, and a computerised 'fly-though' of the village as it existed in the 14th century."

The words of two eminent archaeologists, Professors Maurice Beresford and Philip Rahtz, will bring the story up to date. In recordings, the pair will speak of their experiences of excavation work, and show an example of a finds tent, complete with working tools and objects found at the site.

"This has given us the opportunity to really use the work that's been done over the last 40 years and reconstruct the site, showing visitors how it was in medieval times as authentically as possible," said Mr Wiggle.

Malton Museum was awarded a grant of £50,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It was backed by Malton and Norton town councils, Ryedale District Council, the Ryedale area committee of North Yorkshire County Council and Yorkshire Museums, Libraries and Archive Council.

"We are absolutely delighted that the Heritage Lottery Fund has made this award, recognising the importance of the museum to the local community," said Mr Wiggle.

Other partners in the project include English Heritage, which supported the development of the project and the exhibition plan.

On July 31 and August 14 and 28, visitors to the museum will be taken on a minibus to the Wharram Percy site.

Story of a deserted village

WHARRAM Percy lies between Thixendale and Wharram-le-Street, and was first inhabited during the 10th century.

Many villages were deserted during the Middle Ages when the Black Death struck. However, the demise of Wharram Percy was caused by the local baron, who evicted the tenants and demolished their houses to make more agricultural land.

The church at Wharram Percy was still used for another 300 years, gathering parishioners from four surrounding villages, of which only Thixendale survives.

The name Wharram comes from an Old Scandinavian word meaning "at the bends", and Percy is the family name of the Dukes of Northumberland, lords of the manor from the 12th to the 14th century.

The foundations of more than 30 medieval peasant houses are to be found on the site, along with evidence of Stone Age occupation, a settlement dating back to the Bronze Age, Roman farms and an Anglo-Saxon estate.

The University of York archaeology department played a key role in the excavation of Wharram Percy. For four decades, an army of volunteers gathered for three weeks every summer to dig at the site, which is regarded as one of the best-preserved of some 3,000 villages abandoned between the 11th and 18th centuries.

University of York academics Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts have written a number of reports on Wharram Percy.

Updated: 10:52 Wednesday, June 08, 2005