From Lincolnshire’s lime woods to cute Cotswold meadows and empty Romney Marsh, a small number of Britain’s churches stand in pronounced, peculiar rural isolation.
Many are – or might be (we’ll get to that) – plague churches: hubs which were left behind when their surrounding settlement was fearfully abandoned or relocated during Eurasia’s second bubonic plague pandemic.
Beginning with the Black Death (one of the deadliest medieval diseases), which claimed an estimated 50 million lives during the mid-14th century, this pandemic persisted via numerous other outbreaks – not least 1665–66’s Great Plague of London – until around 1800.
As ever with history, however, things are rarely as neatly binary as the claims might suggest. According to local historians, many of Britain’s so-called plague churches actually fell into solitude because of, or also thanks to, an array of other causes such as coastal erosion, emparking (lords enclosing their manors to create private estates, sometimes for hunting) or the purchase of formerly free-to-use fields by sheep farmers.
Factor in the common absence of definitive records, and you'll find that plague-church claims typically exist in a frustratingly uncertain realm of theory and guesswork, conjecture and clickbait.
Plague churches in the UK
Dode Church, Kent
Among the most accepted examples of a plague church is Dode Church in the Kent Downs, which everyone agrees lay empty for 675 years after its namesake village was decimated by the Black Death. Rather more spurious is the Dodechild myth, recalling a seven-year-old girl who died here and now infrequently haunts Dode’s churchyard.
Willing to brave the Dodechild? If so, this dinky, stone-and-flint number in a wooded vale west of Rochester reopened in 2024 for weddings, memorials and christenings as well as regular events from history talks to supper clubs. Expect hay-laid floors and candlelight dancing on chunky walls.
In 2022, Dode also opened a Neolithic-style burial chamber in the ancient Dode Church for humanist rites of passage.
All Saints, Dunterton
While many plague churches have spurious histories, the Tamar Valley’s Grade I-listed All Saints is a safe bet, long shorn of its own local village. Like Dode Church, this too has a romantic connection to juniors: some call it the “Children’s Church” in reference to a legend detailing how orphaned village kids improbably survived the Black Death here.
Ringed by low-lying fields on Dartmoor’s western fringes, All Saints’ mottled stone walls and stately, tall tower look particularly bewitching in low light. A fundraising walk to it along the River Tamar runs every October; otherwise; occasional spring services take place and visitors are welcome in-between.
St Andrew's Church, Woodwalton
In the ‘possible plague church’ camp are St Andrew's Church in Woodwalton, marooned above its eponymous Cambridgeshire village.
St Oswald's Church, Swinbrook
The field-hugged St Oswald’s is also home to some exceptional 14th-century wall paintings, and sits just off the Cotswolds’ River Windrush outside Burford. It's one of the 'possible' plague churches.
St Thomas Becket Church, Romney Marsh
Romney Marsh’s red-brick St Thomas Becket is a tiny, Norman-era gem flanked by flooded dykes and muddily accessible only on foot. Fairfield, the hamlet which once spawned it, was likely finished off by a subsequent malaria epidemic.
St Michael & All Angels Church, Northamptonshire
Overlooking the rural River Nene, this 13th-century confection close to Corby abuts an equally diminutive graveyard. Look out too for grassy humps – evidence of the settlement once also present here. Wadenhoe’s “new” waterside village, complete with thatched limestone houses, is visible below. Evensong and communion services are occasionally held.
Old Hamsey Church, Lewes
More suspect a plague church contender is Old Hamsey Church near Lewes in East Sussex. Websites will tell you that this picturesque spot, wholly islanded by the River Ouse, anchored a bustling community until the Black Death intervened; yet archaeologists have found no evidence of that depopulated settlement. Largely untouched since the 1300s and lovingly maintained, the church is delightful to enter at any rate.
St Andrew’s Old Church, Holcombe
Even if these alleged plague churches might not be factually classed as such, they are all attractive – and well worth a visit. Indeed, some look so vintage that they’ve attracted starry TV productions. In Somerset’s Mendip Hills, for instance, St Andrew’s Old Church once appeared in Poldark. Its other big brag is a memorial to the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott — whose father brewed beer in the local village of Holcombe’s newer incarnation, a mile away.
Litle Ringstead, Norfolk
While some plague churches are in tact, others lie in ruins. Just inland from The Wash, by Hunstanton in Norfolk, there once stood a hamlet called Ringstead Parva (aka Little Ringstead); all that endures today, stranded within a circular wheat field, is the dilapidated chapel of its former place of worship. And yet, despite its decrepitude, this probably-13th-century wreck still acts as a poignant, forsaken monument to truly terrifying times — just like all those other plague-blighted churches in far better nick.
St Mary’s, Ampney St Mary
Assembled with classic Cotswolds honey-stone, St Mary’s sits alone in meadows with the community of Ampney St Mary now two miles away. Attend an Evensong service on the month’s first Sunday from May to September and you can also admire its fragments of medieval murals and classy stained-glass windows.
St George’s Church, Lincolnshire
Northeast of Lincoln, the old Saxon settlement called Goltho is long gone – save for one structure. Nowadays, St George’s is accompanied only by corn and rapeseed fields. Due to damage from a lightning-caused fire, it’s impossible to enter, but the appealingly quaint red-brick chapel is still worth admiring from outside.
Cucklet Church, Derbyshire
Here’s an altogether different kind of plague church in the eastern Peak District. As an epidemic took hold during 1665, the villagers of Eyam heroically quarantined themselves. Their services were moved to an al-fresco cave, now called Cucklet Church and visitable today, to minimise infection. Nevertheless, 260 people perished.
Words by Richard Mellor
