Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages

by Matthew Green

Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff. This is the extraordinary tale of Britain’s eerie and remarkable ghost towns and villages; shadowlands that once hummed with life. Peering through the cracks of history, we find Dunwich, a medieval city plunged off a cliff by sea storms; the abandoned village of Wharram Percy, wiped out by the Black Death; the lost city of Trellech unearthed by moles in 2002; and a Norfolk village zombified by the military and turned into a Nazi, Soviet, and Afghan village for training.

Matthew Green, a British historian and broadcaster, tells the astonishing tales of the rise and demise of these places, animating the people who lived, worked, dreamed, and died there. Traveling across Britain to explore their haunting and often-beautiful remains, Green transports the reader to these lost towns and cities as they teeter on the brink of oblivion, vividly capturing the sounds of the sea clawing away row upon row of houses, the taste of medieval wine, or the sights of puffin hunting on the tallest cliffs in the country. We experience them in their prime, look on at their destruction, and revisit their lingering remains as they are mourned by evictees and reimagined by artists, writers, and mavericks.

A stunning and original excavation of Britain’s untold history, Shadowlands gives us a truer sense of the progress and ravages of time, in a moment when many of our own settlements are threatened as never before.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, British Literature, Archaeology, Historical, Nature

368 pages, Hardcover

First published July 19, 2022

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up-and-coming author, and social historian, Matthew Green undertakes a personal journey through Britain’s lost places, the shadowlands of which only scant, mysterious traces survive. These sites tell stories of climate change; monumental shifts in ways of living; of war and conquest; devastating plague; and rumours of hellfire. His destinations include: Skara Brae, the haunting relics of an intriguing, neolithic settlement, found in the Orkney Islands, its outline exposed during the vicious storm of 1850; Trellech in Wales, possible medieval boom town and ongoing source of heated battles between its amateur excavator and entrenched academics; Wharram Percy the Yorkshire village whose demise was set in motion by the Great Death or Pestilence that spread across the world in the mid-fourteenth century; Dunwich gradually consumed by the sea, its ruins once a place of pilgrimage for writers such as Swinburne and Henry James; Capel Calyn in North Wales drowned in the 1960s to make way for a reservoir, a potent symbol of Welsh Nationalism and English oppression; and St. Kilda with its tragic history, so isolated it was used for banishments, its inhabitants once fuel for debates over the nature of “man”. It’s a meticulously-researched, frequently fascinating account, lucid, evocative, erudite but accessible. Matthew Green's book's a wonderful blend of social and cultural history that draws on a variety of sources from local records and interviews to art, myth and literature, but also looks forward to consider the future and what losses might be yet to come.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Faber & Faber for an ARC

[K.J. Charles]

Something of a disappointment as this should have been right up my street. Unfortunately the writing is very overdone, and for me it landed as a bit pretentious and not very readable. DNF around 60%.

Also, the text in Kobo is full of weird random gaps and paragraph breaks, and I am baffled by the publisher's decision to put the footnotes in the main body of the ebook text, after each chapter, so you have to click through six or eight pages to keep reading. It's an ebook. They've been around for two decades. How are publishers still not competent at this?

[Andrew Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tour of British ghost towns, a lot more interesting than I expected. The story of Winchelsea is a story of wine and pirates, Wharram Percy of the black death. St. Kilda of isolation. There are abandoned Battle Areas for military training with fabricated “villages” throughout the UK. They might have a Nazi German or Soviet or Afghan setting. The book says that prior to and during WWII, 20 percent of the UK landmass was expropriated for this reason, a staggering number I thought. Lots of cool information like that in here, and very entertaining as well.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eight terrific essays on the transience of all things, but especially the places people live -- towns, cities, islands. Green writes about eight locations in the British Isles depopulated by plague, war, training for war, tourism, greed, and rising oceans, and deftly draws parallels to the same currents in our own time and the likelihood of some of our cities becoming ruins and memories before too very long.

The style here is personal but the details of the author's travel and his state of mind are always tangential to the history, which is told in lively detail with an eye toward irony. Hard to choose a favorite among the essays but the one on St. Kilda made the greatest impression on me with its description of a culture uniquely formed by its environment and perhaps closer to the Iron Age than to its contemporary 19th Century London.

Amazing stuff all around and absolutely recommended.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just north of where I live is not one but two deserted villages, Knowlton and on the opposite bank of the River Allen is Brockington. I have walked past them on a guided tour and looked at the bumps in the fields. There are various reasons why this might have happened, the Black Death being a popular one, but the exact reason may never be known.

Matthew Green first heard of Dunwich in 2016, a medieval city that had fallen into the sea because of coastal erosion. The last church in the city had dropped into the sea in 1922 and the mysticism of the place intrigued him. It would be the beginnings of a series of journeys that would take him from the wonderfully named Winchelsea to the bleak Scottish islands that are battered by the Atlantic, to the mountains of Wales where a village was deliberately drowned to provide an English city with water.

I thoughts parts of this were excellent, particularly the chapters on Skara Brae on Orkney and Stanford in Norfolk. These two chapters had Green visiting the sites and teasing out the stories from what he was observing. Other chapters were more of a potted history with a handful of paragraphs when he did actually rock up to the place. It can’t be easy to get the feel of a location that mostly is at the bottom of the sea or is a series of lumps and bumps in a field, but reading this I felt that he had researched these places mostly from a desk. It was not bad overall, but I thought it could have been much better.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book’s laudable aim is to question what we think we know about British history, by delving into places that were once hugely significant but that no longer exist. There’s such a huge current appetite for ‘lost’ everything in this country - London rivers, landscapes (Doggerland et al), rewilding, urban exploration - and it’s not hard to understand why, given climate change, Brexit, war, plagues, a sense of a world out of control, and loss of connection with what little nature is left, and historical fabric disappearing as well. On a small island built on layers upon layers of visible history, it’s interesting to add these ghost places into the mix, and to realise how shifting and unstable our geo-social foundations are, that British history and topography isn’t a straightforward linear narrative at all, but disrupted throughout the centuries by - guess what, climate change (coastal erosion especially), plagues (the Black Death et al), war, international bonds forged and broken. Plus ca change and all that. So it’s a perfect moment to publish a book like this, and the author rightly talks often about climate change past and present, along with other man-made and natural catastrophes that have shaped the natural and human landscape of Britain. This book should have been right up my street given the social/landscape history subject matter.

But it wasn’t.

The style was my main gripe. It’s over-wordy, repetitive and hyperbolic; purple prose abounds. Editors, please do better.

The content also irked me. While full of fascinating facts (and a lot of pointless statistics) there is a vast amount of supposition. OK, we’re talking about places about whose history we can’t be certain, I admit, but I found the flights of authorial imagination trite and grating.

My final irk is the gendered narrative. It’s a very male viewpoint with a focus on battles, politics and derring-do, rather than ordinary life. So women are largely absent. Not good enough.

There’s also far too much ‘horrid history’ for my liking - needlessly gruesome details of warfare, natural disasters and massacring animals, which all felt a bit pornographic.

Did I learn a lot? Yes.

Did I enjoy? On the whole, no.

Has it got great reviews and I’m in a minority here? Not for the first time, yes.

ARC courtesy of Netgalley

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Shadowlands – A Visit to Britain’s Lost Towns

Historian Matthew Green takes the reader on a lyrical but completely immersive historical tour of Britain’s lost towns and villages. He takes us on a visit of eight, lost places, lost in completely different way, but not forgotten. Green has managed to untangle the stories of what became ill-fated places, including Winchelsea which was lost to the sea.

These places were lost for many various reasons for me the most striking story is that in Chapter eight, which he calls the Village of the Damned. That being the village of Capel Celyn in Wales, a village lost due to man’s need for water resources. While as an urban historian I have recently been looking at how Manchester gained its water from the Lake District and its disregard for the locals. This story is far more poignant as this removal of the people, the village is now under a water reservoir serving the people of England. How Green rebuilds the human stories and their fight is so striking and meaningful.

Just as striking is the removal of people from the island of St Kilda in 1930 even though these islands had been inhabited for over a thousand years. How in August 1930 the people were evacuated from the island, how they closed the public services, held their last church service before drowning their dogs of the only pier on the island. This being one of many stories of violence that appears throughout the book, not as glorification but mournful.

As in many stories of lost Britain there is always a story about Dunwich, the town that was built on a cliff in Suffolk before finally falling into the sea as the cliff collapsed. The story of the Church bell still being heard ringing today, is a fanciful story and always has been, but it is always a nice story to be reminded of.

Green has really examined the archives and dug deep to recover and tell those stories. This seems to be a work of passion, an immersive love and retelling of forgotten histories. But then that is part of the job of a historian, to retell stories sometimes forgotten by most and package them in the easiest form for none historians to absorb.

This is an excellent book written by a social and cultural historian that has brought all his training and skill to bear.

[Chris Steeden · Rating 3 out of 5]

There have been plenty of great reviews on Goodreads detailing the eight essays so I will not go over them here. I was expecting more of a travelogue if I am honest (I read the reviews after finishing the book). The author does indeed go to the places but he really goes over the history of how or maybe how these places were lost and what happened before then and, in some cases, after.

No doubt, each essay has a lot to offer and the reader does learn an awful lot but, and I am showing my ‘I am not an academic’ card here, a few were a bit of a slog whereas others I was completely engaged and thoroughly enjoyed especially the last two. The military take over an area in Norfolk during the Second World War for training purposes thus evacuating 750 residents from the villages and hamlets. The other was village of Capel Celyn in Wales that would be drowned so that water could be supplied to Liverpool back in the 1950’s / 60s.

[Sherrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been ploughing through this book for ages, well researched but a challenging read. I will dip into it again in the future.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

If we’re out on a walk in the countryside, I’m always fascinated if we come across a ruined cottage or hamlet. I wonder about the people who lived there, how they lived, why they left, and why the houses ended up abandoned and in ruins. So Shadowlands is a book that really appealed to me telling the story of how entire villages, towns and indeed cities disappeared over the years, and how they were rediscovered.

Matthew Green explains that abandonment or loss could have been because of changing climate and landscape, for political reasons, for socioeconomic reasons, because of human intervention or for reasons historians and archaeologists can only speculate about. And there has been plenty speculation about some of the sites, often controversial such as in the case of Trellech in the Welsh Marches.

Shadowlands was such an interesting book to read with its mixture of history of the era, the social history of how people lived at the time, the mix of theories and facts about what happened to the people who lived in the places which had vanished, and what we can learn for our times from what happened back then.

There was such a variety of places included in the book from places I’ve actually visited, such as Skara Brae on Orkney the, places I’ve heard of like St Kilda and places completely new to me like Wharram Percy in Yorkshire. The book is packed full of fascinating facts and written in a really accessible and compelling way. There is a coda section to the book which mentions places which may suffer similar fates to some of the towns in the book. I watched a short and sobering video on YouTube showing coastal erosion at Skipsea, situated on one of the fastest eroding coastlines not just in Britain but in Europe. It was scary to see how close to the edge some of the houses are and sad to think it is inevitable that before long, they too, will be lost to the sea. A similar situation is happening at Fairbourne in north-west Wales where rising sea levels and flooding threatens the village.

If, like me, you look at old abandoned, ruined cottages and think ‘I wonder…’, then this is a book for you.

[Carlton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of essays about a selection of British towns and villages abandoned due to economic change or lost to environmental changes (loss to the sea or changing river access). I found the book interesting, but too uneven in tone, insufficiently detailed and fragmented. I learned some fascinating facts, but was dissatisfied with the book as a whole.
Written by a historian, although at times the writing seemed to be more enthusiastic amateur, with the disadvantages that the book can veer off into purple prose (The top of the pines floated in the wind, lofty and conspiratorial, the faint paths pathetic against their might”), peppered with fragmented personal descriptions, reminiscences or suppositions (regularly using modifiers such as “likely”, “say”, “it is even possible”).
On the positive side the writing is often lively, anecdotal and easy to read, although sometimes the background research feels as if it has been transcribed into the book so as not to have been wasted.
To condense his exploration of these abandonments, Green necessarily simplifies his description of historic situations, which sometimes seemingly accept the determinism of hindsight, rather than the complexity and uncertainty of lived history. For example:
Fragmented into rival kingdoms, Wales, by 1066, was a very different cultural and political entity from the freshly conquered and already unified realm of England. England was not unified by 1066, although the Norman invaders wished to make it so, and its borders were still fluid with the Normans for years stamping out rebellions (and their successors waging territorial wars of expansion upon Scotland, Wales and Cornwall), but 1066 is a recognisable date.

The book discusses eight main sites, one from prehistory, four from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and three from the twentieth century, whilst providing numerous further examples:
1. Skara Brae - about 5,000 years ago, possibly lost climate change with flooding of adjacent hunting grounds
2. Trellech - 13th century iron making boom town on Welsh borders, reducing in size due to political change and the Black Death
3. Winchelsea - 13th century East Sussex port and town lost to the sea between about 1270 and 1288, now called Old Winchelsea to distinguish it from the new replacement Winchelsea town founded about three miles away by Edward I in the 1280’s. “It was the first major town in Britain to drown since the beginning of recorded history.” New Winchelsea becomes depopulated gradually from about 1350 as the estuary silts up and the wine trade, upon which its prosperity is founded, diverts to other ports.
4. Wharram Percy - deserted village - but also mentions Tilgarsley, deserted village north west of Eynsham, which was larger. Green traces the desertion as being precipitated by the Black Death in 1348, but the village then shrinking over the following 200 years, as more labour intensive arable farming was replaced by enclosure and sheep farming.
5. Dunwich - much lost to the sea from gradual coastal erosion after two “calamitous” sea storms in 1288 and 1328, including numerous ecclesiastical buildings and churches. Green references visits by Henry James (English Hours) and W G Sebald (The Rings of Saturn), as well as historical researches by Elizabethan writer Stow, who was commissioned by Day, whose early life was spent in Dunwich.
6. St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides - after perhaps 2,000 years of human occupation, the island was abandoned in 1930 due to depopulation (about 200 down to about 40) over the past 100 years or so, with discussion of the European Enlightenment and the idea of an ideal “primitive” man.
7. The villages of Breckland in Norfolk - requisitioned by the army in the 1940’s to allow training for the D-day landings, they were retained by the state and not returned to their owners, so that they could be used by the military to simulate Cold War Britain and Germany, Northern Ireland and Helmand Province.
8. Capel Celyn - a Welsh village drowned to provide a further source of water for the English city of Liverpool in the 1950’s.
A short Coda muses upon the ruination of the future, caused by climate change and economic conditions.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The synopsis looked fascinating & it turned out to be an engaging & informative read - for the most part. The author has completed lots of research & visits to the sites of some of Britain's lost towns & cities. From Old Winchelsea on the coast washed away by successive sea flooding, to the places commandeered for training purposes by the army amidst WWII, & an island community in the Outer Hebrides (St Kilda) which was eventually cleared of the few remaining residents in the early twentieth-century.

As mentioned above, it is written in an engaging style, & I feel I learned quite a lot. My one criticism is the repeated (but usually brief) mentioning of animals (mainly rabbits, dogs, & birds) being killed, sometimes purposefully to stop them killing other livestock, but at other times just because they were an inconvenience to 'progress'. It unfortunately happens, but I'd rather not read about it as I find it very upsetting. For that reason, I had to take a star off as it rather marred my enjoyment of certain chapters.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Faber & Faber, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should count this as a DNF, really, as I only read three chapters. Interesting subject matter, but the style of writing was not for me, and I found I didn't really want to come back to it. It was disappointing as I'd expected to love this. The chapter on Wharram Percy was quite good, however.

[Kid Ferrous · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Green’s prescient and exquisite book “Shadowlands” is a poignant and evocative of lost Britain, with a profound sense of regret running through it.
The book is well researched and sensitive to the subject matter, reviving ancient and modern places lost to various forces such as war, disease and the elements. Green brings Britain's forgotten history into the light for a modern age, and in so doing proffers a warning for the future.
A sublime treat.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Green, a graduate in history from Oxford, writes a very personal, first-person account of his journey to a variety of “lost” places across Britain. From ancient settlements such Skara Brae, and the 13th century town of Trellech on the Welsh borders. To villages deserted as a result of the Black Death and those lost to water be it the sea, Winchelsea and Dunwich, or as a result of mans need for a water supply, Capel Celyn. Each chapter captures a different place and by far the most interesting for me were those of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides and the villages of Breckland in Norfolk. The former largely because of my interest in the inhabitants of this island, many of whom became migrants to Australia, the latter because it is such a fascinating story. Whole villages requisitioned by the army in the 1940’s for training purposes and still used to train troops in more recent conflicts, never returned to their owners.

Green ends the book on a sombre note, giving insight into Britain and the worlds future if we continue on our current trajectory. “Imagine your favourite city, your favourite street, as a wasteland. The cathedral fluttering with bats, the subway underwater, grass straggling through cracked pavements, the city pitch black at night, and silent as death: a heap of mournful rubble, neglected until the windswept reverie of some aesthete many centuries later.”

There is so much to like about this book. The research is sound. The places fascinating. And yet there was something not quite right for me. There was an unevenness in the telling, a tendency to describe his physical journey in very poetic (perhaps purple) prose, which I found a little distracting - “… up I went, up a helter-skelter of country lanes, with the forest’s immense cascade of trees to my left…” The illustrations were unfortunately very small and, even though I have a good knowledge of the geography, I would have loved a map that showed the sites. Nevertheless, this was an interesting read. A good introduction to a collection of fascinating histories which, thanks to good referencing, I can go on to read more about.

[Thom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating collection of essays on locations in the UK that have vanished, taken over by nature or man. It is both well researched (55 pages of notes and index) and personable, part travelogue - the author visits the locations also. Could have used more maps.

Each of the eight locations is interesting in its own way, and each of the essays would probably stand on its own. Through the introduction and coda, the author draws us into thinking of the locations we visit every day, abandoned, empty, or reclaimed by nature.

I'd read about Dunwich, which probably lead me to this book. My favorite location covered was Winchelsea. I'm not from Britain, and haven't visited any of these, but it was really great to read about them here.

The audio book is read by the author; I checked out both that and the hard cover from the library. I'll be checking bookstores for his earlier book London: A Travel Guide Through Time, which the library doesn't have.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another cool history of very specific places and people, definitely right in my wheelhouse. Now I just need to find the very specific history of the Brewsters in England to know where I can claim my castle...

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
A very detailed, incredibly well researched book. There is a lot of colour & the author’s personal journeys to each location added a lot of emotion so this isn’t a dry research text. And yet this added detail didn’t always really gel for me & I found my attention wandering at times.

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject but I found this kind of boring

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Goodreads Giveaway Win***

Was I interested in Britain's lost cities before I started this book? No. Did I become interested after reading this book? Also no. And YET I enjoyed this book. The reason is Matthew Greens writing. It had this gossipy feel to it that I found delightful. Although I doubt I'll read more books about Britain's vanished villages I do doubt I'll be seeking out more books by Matthew Green.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shadowlands is a wonderful exploration of Britain's lost places and history. Green takes you on a journey through this landscape, turning his stories of lost places into a reflection of loss - geographic, historical and personal. The past has a lot to teach us, and the lessons of the forgotten becomes increasingly important. Green writes his expedition in poetic and lyrical style evoking a haunted landscape

[Sophy H]

I'm leaving this unrated as I don't feel I read enough of it to make a fair assessment.

The writing style quickly dispersed my interest to be honest. I skimmed through the first chapter on Skara Brae, there felt like too much speculation and guesswork. I was interested in the Trellech chapter as I've been there but that chapter felt like information overload. Perhaps I should remind myself that I didn't like history in school and dropped the subject as soon as I was able to do Geography instead! Raaaa, Geographers Unite!!

So DNF, not my bag.

[Mrs Karen Bull · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very beautifully written book
Matthew Green is wonderful author, very well researched and enjoyed every moment of this book

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good where it's good, and mediocre to boring in some bits. I will never tire of reading about vanished places, though.

[Mijke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heel interessant 3,5*

[Gavin Felgate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people probably do not know that Britain has a number of settlements that have vanished , and Dr. Matthew Green's book explores several of the reasons why this has happened.

For example, Skara Brae in the Orkneys was a settlement that sank under what effectively became a landfill site, and the village of Dunwich gradually fell off a cliff as a result of coastal erosion.

The book here is very detailed, and I was able to tell when reading this that Dr. Green had done a large amount of research, from a variety of sources. I noticed that, while he look a largely objective view, he occasionally became slightly opinionated, particularly with his view about how we should ensure that settlements stop disappearing; his conclusion mentions the devastating effects in some places of the Coronavirus pandemic, including public houses that never reopened. I noticed also that he is no fan of King Charles I, who he accused of "political and religious tyranny" at one point.

On the other hand, he takes an almost completely impartial view in one chapter to an incident where an entire village was lost to create a reservoir, setting out both points of view within what seems to have been a large moral dilemma, with the loss of homes weighed against the need to get water to the city of Liverpool. He mentions how one of the protestors suggested poisoning the reservoir water, until someone else responded that the locals "drink only beer".

Some of the best bits of the book, however, were the sections that described Dr. Green's own experience of visiting the sites where the villages used to be, and being able to witness them first hand, and he describes them in vivid detail.

[Arthur Morrill III · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages,” by Matthew Green (ISBN: 9780393635348), Publication Date: 19 Jul 2022, earns four stars for the narrative, but misses five stars because the book offers no maps and almost no photographs to support the riveting narrative, the addition of which would greatly help place the reader “there.”

This is a fascinating series of stories about rediscovering Britain’s lost past by recounting the discovery of vanished villages, towns, and cities throughout the British Isles. Why did they disappear? How did they disappear? The answers are as varied as the towns themselves. Some were covered in water; others were buried in sand. For some, the land on which they stood eroded causing them to fall into the sea. Some were abandoned due to the plague, others were taken over by the military for urban warfare training, and one was even unearthed by moles.

Author Matthew Green’s exhaustive research and site visits take the reader on a most fascinating journey across Britain, delving into histories, archeology, urban design, the politics of discovery, and more, all the while bringing the occupants of these vanished towns to life by what we know of history, what they left behind, and in some cases, their own testimony. It’s a great read.

Thanks to the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, for granting this reviewer this opportunity to read this Advance Reader Copy (ARC), and thanks to NetGalley for helping to make that possible.

[Nick Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the concept of this book fascinating, and the subjects chosen - 'lost' British settlements including Skara Brae, Winchelsea, Capel Celyn, St Kilda, Dunwich, Trellech, Stanta and Wharram Percy - were well picked. These places, abandoned for a range of reasons and covered in chronological order in the book, were written about in substantial depth and Green clearly had done plenty of research. I certainly found plenty which was new and interesting, despite being fairly familiar with a couple of the locations focussed on.

However, I'm not sure why I didn't like it more. I just found aspects of the author's writing a little irritating - just too many tangents about wine cellars and literature and serfs and the like, and just too much of the prose was overflowery and felt slightly pretentious. I'm sure it was my fault, me not being quite in the mood at times, and it didn't spoil an interesting read, but maybe I personally would have enjoyed slightly less padded-out chapters and maybe a couple more of them.

[Sharyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shadowlands is an excellent read and very well written and researched. It took me a lot longer to read than I expected the fewer than 300 pages of actual book to take but it is so crammed full of facts and fascinating facts that it needs a good deep read. Quite emotional in places and maybe a bit overly poetic in others it tells the story of disappeared places and the reasons for those disappearances. Well worth reading if you are interested in the history of Great Britain and how some places managed to disappear from our map. With thanks to the publishers and the author, and to NetGalley for providing an e-ARC of this title to read and review.

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great collection of histories. Each story builds on itself from the coastal neolithic remains of Skara Brae to the 1960s disappearance of the Welsh town of Capel Celyn. As a small-town teacher who grew up in a large city but now lives in a small town, I felt the pain of many. The Coda rightly reflects how climatic changes in the future may significantly affect many cities and towns in the future. My arid town mining its aquifer, we will probably not be treated by Capel Celyn, but the future may be difficult.