History is nothing if not an exercise in informed imagination. On a country walk in Rutland arranged by a group of (non-historian) friends, I noted that the Ordnance Survey map showed our planned route, following a ridge of high ground separating the valleys of the meandering Gwash and Chater rivers, passed close by Martinsthorpe, described as the site of a medieval village.

Arriving at the spot, a well-defined hollow way, its bed eroded by the tread of countless feet, the wheels of carts, and the hooves of livestock, led towards a field of irregular grassy lumps and bumps. Although not the best-preserved deserted medieval village (DMV), with a modern track and an abandoned building evidence of later...