Settlement deserted

Lea Castle still stands beside the buried town, but the fields around it have swallowed the streets, shops and houses that once crowded the bank of the River Barrow. For a time Lea was a marching place, a trading place and a target for raiders; then the water, the wars and the patience of grass did what fire had not finished. The great ash tree kept the memory alive long after the buildings disappeared, and even that has gone. What remains is a flat green edge of land where an whole town life still fits beneath the soil.