IN the middle of the 14th Century the Black Death swept through Britain like a scythe.

A third of the population fell in its wake and whole communities were decimated.

A combination of bubonic plague and a pneumonia-like virus, it changed the face of both town and countryside for years to come, sometimes forever.

Now, evidence is emerging that spread across our green and pleasant land are a whole series of "villages of the disappeared".

Hamlets whose occupants were either stricken down by the dreadful disease or who fled upon hearing it was in the area, abandoning their homes to nature for no one dared live in them any more.

One such collection of cursed cottages could lie on the edge of the pretty Teme Valley village of Whitbourne, between Worcester and Bromyard.

At least that's one of the theories behind the People of Old Whitbourne project, which was launched recently to delve into the history of the area.

The investigation was prompted by the belief of mediaeval historian Katherine Lack that an old orchard behind her home could centuries ago have been the site of a group of buildings.

Katherine and husband Paul, a former Teme Valley clergyman who had to retire through ill-health, moved into their pretty black and white cottage in the village three years ago and it didn't take her long to notice, as she put it, "some strange lumps and bumps in the orchard at the back".

Up the middle of the field ran what appeared to be a track of some kind, long grown over.

"It just looked like an old road of some kind, a hollow way," she explained, "and if you looked carefully you could make out a cross-roads, where another track passed in the other direction.

"There were also raised areas in the orchard that caught my eye."

An initial, exploratory visit by archaeologists revealed five hard bases that could easily have been the site of buildings many years ago.

Katherine could sniff an intriguing puzzle and perhaps it should be pointed out here the lady holds good currency when it comes to solving historical mysteries.

Last year, her book seeking to explain the riddle of the body in a tomb in Worcester Cathedral, called The Worcester Pilgrim, was published to much acclaim.

Anyway, Katherine considered this orchard behind her cottage could once have been occupied.

"The most obvious explanation for people abandoning their villages in the Middle Ages was the Black Death," she said.

"It started in Asia and swept through Europe, arriving in Britain in the late 1340s. It would have been in the Worcestershire and Herefordshire area about 1349.

"It was spread by fleas, but also by people sneezing and it was so contagious if an infected person sneezed anyone within a two-yard radius would catch it."

The Black Death got its name because it often caused its victim's skin to turn dark purple, almost black. It was invariably fatal, some people dying the same day they were infected.

In Britain, one third of the population perished.

So was this Whitbourne orchard once a village of the disappeared?

Luckily, those who hold the purse strings for such research are interested.

"We have been fortunate enough to obtain a grant of £25,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and a further £1,750 from the Nationwide Building Society, under a partnership called Local Heritage Initiative, administered by the Countryside Agency," said Katherine.

"We have broadened the project to cover an overall historical look back at life in Whitbourne.

"It now includes a wide range of activities from working with the village schoolchildren on their study of those who fought in the First World War, through learning how to conduct an archaeological investigation of abandoned sites in the village, to putting on a theatrical production at the end of it all to present our discoveries to the wider community."

A public meeting was held in the village hall a couple of weeks ago and already old photographs and stories about life in Whitbourne past are beginning to surface.

As far as investigation of the orchard is concerned, three specialists from Herefordshire Archaeological Service will be carrying out a Time Team-type survey over the next 12 months.

They will use both underground probes and surface soundings to try to establish the number and age of properties that once occupied the site.

Was it an old village? Will there be a pile of skeletons? Did the Black Knight cop for the Black Death? Or did everyone just move away because they couldn't stand the smell of Old Mukdragher's pigs?

These and a 101 other questions Katherine hopes to answer in an eventual book looking back at the social history of Whitbourne.

A film starring Russell Crowe, as the local knight, may follow.