A talk by Professor Emerita Barbara English MBE, FSA, FRHistS.

Barbara will explore the cause and distribution of the desertion of medieval villages, using mainly East Yorkshire examples.  Thousands of villages have been lost or deserted, in the Bridlington area the chief cause being coastal erosion but also to make great parks, to turn arable land into sheep pastures, or from geographical problems (water shortage) disease (the plague) or climate (too long a winter).

Barbara is a graduate of St Andrews University. Brought up in York, after university she became an archivist for the Historical Manuscripts Commission in West Yorkshire, then a history editor at a publishing house, and finally an academic at the University of Hull, teaching primarily the regional and local history of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

She has always taken an interest in the conservation of Beverley, where she lives, for which work she was awarded an MBE.