Gareth Icke explores remains of 11th century church near Heath
Gareth Icke explores remains of 11th century church near Heath for his latest episode on YouTube
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00:00Push me out to sea, baby, it's the best thing for us both.
00:25I'll be happy out there, baby, fish below and stars above,
00:33and you'll be happier without me.
00:42Hello, everyone.
00:43Welcome to a brand new episode of The Walk.
00:45My name's Gareth, and I'm in the beautiful Derbyshire village of Heath,
00:48which is just on the outskirts of Chesterfield.
00:51Now, I'm walking away from Heath.
00:53The reason being is it's not actually Heath I've come to find.
00:56I've come to find the ancient medieval village of Lund, or Lound.
01:02Now, this village hasn't existed since the 12th century,
01:06and basically, I don't know if you can hear that,
01:10that's the M1 motorway.
01:12The site of the village of Lund is basically junction 29,
01:16so as you can imagine, it's gone in the 12th century.
01:19There's a motorway there, so it's well and truly decimated, or is it?
01:23If you have a look at this map, as I come away there from Heath,
01:27you can just see in between the carriageways, there are some remains in there.
01:32Now, those remains date all the way back to the 11th century,
01:37and that's what I'm coming to find.
01:49So, back in that direction, that's Heath.
02:07That's where I've parked the car and stomped down the hill there from the current church.
02:14Now, this road, what was a road, should eventually go under a couple of carriageways,
02:22and I should be able to get into that little section that you can see there from Google Maps,
02:27where those remains are.
02:29Now, unfortunately, because of the location of these remains,
02:32you're going to hear that annoying sound of the M1 motorway for the entirety of this video, I think,
02:37which is quite annoying, but I don't have enough power, really, to try and stop everyone driving.
02:42I wish I did, but unfortunately, I don't think they'd listen to me.
02:46Right, so that's the road. That's the main road there that goes off into Chesterfield.
02:49I've just had to run across there.
02:53Now, this looks to me, judging by the street light, that this would have been once upon a time,
02:58well, someone would have lived there once upon a time then,
03:01so I'm guessing this was obviously the road.
03:03Mate, those sirens can do one, really.
03:07Yeah, this would have been a street once upon a time.
03:10So Lund, or Lound, appeared in the doomsday book of 1086.
03:17There was Lund, Lound, and then there was Lichith, which I'm guessing is obviously Heath.
03:23Well, then in the 12th century, those two places merged, basically.
03:28The people of Lound left and went up there.
03:32The reason being, I don't know, but I found the remains already.
03:36So here we go.
03:39This is all the remains.
03:42Oh, my goodness, mate, look at that.
03:45There's a shed load of pheasants.
03:47I don't think I've ever seen that many pheasants in one place.
03:50A proper pheasant rave.
03:52So that's all the remains of the gate into the churchyard.
03:56Now, the ages of these graves are going to be unbelievable, I imagine,
04:00so I'm going to go around, obviously, take a look at some of them.
04:02This is all that remains right here of the church.
04:06Just the south entrance, and that's it.
04:09And I'll come to the reasons why that remains in a second,
04:14but let's go and have a look inside, shall we?
04:16So this was the south entrance into what was, obviously, a much, much bigger church.
04:24Wow, look at that.
04:28Wow.
04:34I'm hoping I'm not standing on graves in this section.
04:38But there are headstones here, look, that have just been left.
04:42What year is that? 1768.
04:47Wow.
04:50And so the church would have covered all this site of pheasants still running around.
04:56And there's the M1 motorway. See just how close it is.
05:00So when the people of Lund moved just up the road there and joined in with Heath,
05:07the church remained, this remained, and people were still buried here.
05:11And then in 1852, they knocked this down and they built a new church,
05:16which is still there now, up in Heath itself.
05:19But this remained as a burial site.
05:22So some of the graves that we'll look at today are actually Victorian.
05:27And what they did was they kept this structure that I've just looked at,
05:31was the south porch of the church, but they kept that as basically a mortuary chapel
05:38when they were having funerals and stuff here.
05:40So I'm going to have a little bit of a walk around now and see some of the graves
05:43and see just how old some of these are.
05:45These are so old.
05:48I mean, look at that crack down there.
05:50These are pretty epic headstones.
05:53I'm wondering if these were, you know, for, you know, everyone's significant,
05:57but do you know what I mean?
05:58Like people that were kind of quite prominent within the community.
06:03So there we go. Look at that.
06:06So that's the daughter, the daughter then of the vicar.
06:11Departed this life March 1874.
06:16That was, you know, long after this,
06:18this church had basically ceased to exist as a church, but trying to see the years.
06:24I don't want to get too close. I don't be standing on.
06:27What's that? 1800.
06:29Oh mate, that's heartbreaking.
06:33So she's died, aged just 24 years old, leaving an infant daughter of just 12 days old.
06:40So I wonder if that was complications in childbirth.
06:45Oh mate.
06:47I tend to look back at the old days, you know, like Victorian times and stuff with,
06:52with quite an affection, really.
06:53I feel like they had it right in so many ways in history.
06:56I think we've forgotten who we are as human beings quite a lot.
06:59In terms of how we try and have communities and look out for each other.
07:02I don't think there's enough of that now.
07:03I think people just go, whatever.
07:06But also, you know, looking at graves like that, the life expectancy was,
07:11was not great either.
07:13Um, you know, man, look at this one.
07:16That's incredible.
07:20Look how it's, it's kind of almost rotted away.
07:24So what's trying to work out the year of that?
07:26Is that 17?
07:28That a one seven or is that 1817?
07:30It's hard to make out, but look how the word Elizabeth is.
07:36That's crazy.
07:41Uh, 1764.
07:45Age 58.
07:49It's hard to make these ones out.
07:52Incredible.
07:53So this is quite a grand one.
07:55This one, if you look at the bottom,
07:58John John Tomlinson, the husband of Mary Tomlinson died in Rowsley.
08:04So what's that?
08:051864.
08:06He was 86 years old as well.
08:07That's a hell of an age.
08:08Look up.
08:09Look at this.
08:111834.
08:12Age 12.
08:15Mate.
08:19That's, that's too much of that.
08:21And when you walk around, um, you know, graveyards and stuff,
08:24and it's not always just graveyards.
08:25You know, me and my daughter, we, like if you're in a public park or whatever,
08:28we tend to have a look at like the memorials and stuff that are on the benches.
08:31Do you know what I mean?
08:32And, and see what people are saying.
08:33And often you look at the years and it's, it's no, no age at all.
08:37It's quite humbling.
08:38Actually walk around and see that.
08:39I mean that they're 12 years old.
08:40It's just, um, it's just heartbreaking.
08:43But it makes you think like exactly why this village of Lound or Lund,
08:49what, why it, it amalgamated with, with Heath, why the people left here.
08:54Um, and actually if you go back into the, into the level 12th, 13th century,
08:59to constitute a village,
09:00you basically only needed six dwellings and there wouldn't need to be,
09:03you know, massive dwellings.
09:05So essentially six families.
09:06Well, if you've got six families living in a village,
09:09it doesn't take much to basically decimate that village.
09:13It can be, it can be one, you know, huge,
09:15huge hit of illness that can take out the village or even an invasion.
09:19Um, you know, someone can come through, take out, take out, you know,
09:23maybe two or three of those families and the ones that are left, um,
09:27will then, you know, either looking for work or whatever,
09:29will end up leaving.
09:30And, and, you know, in this case they've gone and joined in there with,
09:34with Heath.
09:36There you go. In the distance, you've got Bolsover castle there,
09:40right up on the hill there. That's, that's, um,
09:42that's the town of Bolsover there.
09:43So that just basically does that for 24 hours a day.
09:48That motorway, it honestly doesn't stop.
09:51It's just consistently going running 24 hours a day.
09:55So it's mad really that this, this site is still here.
09:59It's still preserved, you know, cause you've got,
10:01the motorway comes around and then,
10:02and then the dual carriageway off to Chesterfield, you know,
10:04is literally there. Um,
10:07but what's beautiful is that this remains and, um, I mean, they, they,
10:12they're minimal remains of course, but, but at least they're here and it's so,
10:17so old. It's, it's incredible really.
10:20Now this section of the M1 motorway was opened in the late sixties.
10:25So obviously it survived that in the late sixties and it's still going today,
10:29but actually had a battle just in the last few years with HS2, um,
10:33the high speed, um, rail network would have taken out this site.
10:36It would have gone straight through helicopters now make it even more noisy. Um,
10:40it would have come straight through here. This is shelved, but you know,
10:43what governments are like, they change their mind every 20 minutes.
10:45Fingers crossed it doesn't happen. Um, and this, this can survive still.
10:52So there you go. The village of Lund or Lound.
10:57I've seen it spelled both ways. So I like Lund kind of sound.
11:02Sounds quite Viking, doesn't it? Oh yeah. Wow. Look at that.
11:07So there's the door. Amazing.
11:12Amazing that this is all that remains, but it just goes to show, you know,
11:15I keep saying about it in all my other videos, really the,
11:17the history that we've got literally right on your doorstep and you have no idea
11:22that it's here. So that's me. Thank you so much for watching.
11:27Just a short one, the ancient medieval village of Lound or Lund.
11:32Um, and this is all that remains, but at least something remains, you know,
11:36um, like I said at the start,
11:37you would imagine with with it being deserted in the 12th century and also the
11:40motorway and all that, that it would be well and truly decimated.
11:43But thank goodness there's something there as always.
11:47Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.