Following Up Wednesday’s Hail-Blighted Experience
As the subhead says, here’s a quick follow-up from Wednesday’s location scout, this time centring on deserted medieval villages, or “DMVs”, as the acronym would painfully have it.
You might remember that I gave an explanation of what a DMV is and what to expect from one – mainly that it isn’t going to be the lost world of vine-clad ruins that adventure movies would have us believe – and to provide some pictures of a real one, namely the DMV of Woughton, Milton Keynes.
And this is it. Not an earthy hut, blacksmith or ironmongery in sight. Just the indistinct furrow left of centre which was Meadows Lane, the high street which leads to the village pond in the distance. The population these days is made up of sheep and cows. So what happened to Woughton…?
The panel pictured admits that the reasons for people leaving the centre of Woughton while moving some buildings to their present locations are not clear (pictured later), although common explanations given for DMVs are floods, the Black Death and aristocratic fashions for landscaping, known as emparkment or enclosure. Whatever the reason, Woughton has become one of more than 3,000 DMVs in England alone.
So what is left of Woughton? Well, thanks to the information panels situated throughout the DMV, there’s quite a bit once you know what to look for.
The humps visible crossing the pathway correspond to the way in which medieval ploughing created long ridges divided by furrows. Meanwhile, St Mary’s Church is the only surviving medieval building in the area, with the present-day Woughton House Hotel probably occupying the site of the medieval manor house.
The other thing that struck me when trundling around this DMV is just how big it was. While the settlement itself was not huge, the agriculture that surrounded it covered the entire parish – this includes the present-day (and rather posh) village of Woughton-on-the-Green.
While DMVs in England might not have turned out to be the filming locations I hoped they would be, it was an interesting experience, and I’ll certainly know what to look out for the next time I’m tramping around somewhere getting rained on – and, more importantly, it’s given me a separate filming idea: CGI recreations of these DMVs to provide a before and after effect. I suppose that’s the way to approach all little setbacks and disappointments in life – as inspiration for something else.
Anyway, that probably sounds a bit portentous, so I shall sign off and leave you with the thought that next week I have to come up with a way of dissolving someone’s underwear for a VFX shot. Stay safe…!
Copyright © 2021 Chris Nelthorpe/Gasworks Films Ltd