Beneath the University of Nottingham's Park Campus lays the remains of one of Britain's lost villages. The small medieval settlement, named Keighton, appears to have occupied the site close to Highfield Park around 600 years ago.
It is one of more than 1,000 abandoned villages recorded in the country, and was first acknowledged in 13th century deeds. The village was in the possession of Lenton Priory, which had been founded by William Peveral in the early 1100s, writes Kathryn Steenson, an archivist at the University of Nottingham.
Keighton, which is thought to have always been a small settlement, was one of a number of villages that would provide the priory with payments. From the quantities recorded as payment researchers know that both the number of tenants and the quantity of land they held was small.
