Forced to Flee

There was nothing as eerie and for instilling a strange sense of disquiet as the sight of an abandoned house, let alone a whole hillside of stone built villas that clung on to the steep hillside for as far as the eye could see.

We were taking the tortuously rambling tourist route through the Greek Island of Keffalonia when the ruins came into view on the slopes above. A local at the petrol station which was our next stop gave the explanation that because of the massive earthquake of 1953 the residents had been instructed and had accepted as their fate that they would have to vacate their homes forever.

These had been modern homes of the period and yet abandonment and the subsequent exposure to weather had given them the appearance of an ancient almost mythical settlement.

Natural forces have been responsible for the desolation of many towns and large cities across the world.

Epicuen, a lakeside tourist resort in Argentina had provided a livelihood for 1500 occupants seeing to the needs of 20000 tourists a year. A combination of freakish climatic events led to a massive tidal surge in the formerly friendly lake and the full inundation of the town in 1985. The water levels have long since subsided but the population have largely stayed away leaving a mass of twisted reinforcement protruding through crumbled concrete across many square miles.

The town of Plymouth on Montserrat in the West Indies was hastily evacuated after being threatened and subsequently engulfed by lava flows from a succession of volcanic eruptions.

Speculative economic ventures and property gambles have also contributed to many more ghost towns and cities across the globe.

Kilamba New City in Angola was a development by the China International Trust and Investment Corporation with the intention for it to be a major regional population centre. The tower blocks, 750 of them over eight floors each were anticipated to house 50,000 persons supported by an infrastructure of 12 schools, shopping malls, a five star hotel and 100 shops. Construction forged ahead and yet up until 2012 only just over 200 properties had been sold. The town stands empty and forlorn waiting patiently for its buildings and streets to be filled.

On a considerably smaller scale the North Yorkshire located Ravenscar high up on the cliffs just to the south of Robin Hood's Bay was feted as an ideal place for a new town. Investment came from the railways and building plots were set out for purchase along a series of wide avenues. In spite of active marketing in the mid 19th century only a handful of customers were caught up in the idea and today there is the forlorn sight of a few dispersed gritstone built houses occupying the windy summit.

Commercial considerations have also figured in the rise and fall of other towns and cities.

The diamond mining boom of 1908 in Namibia was the catalyst for the rapid growth of Kolmanskop and yet within a few years the settlement was abandoned and left to the ravages of the natural environment. The desert sands, unchecked by human actions have simply blown into and become established between the walls and under the collapsed roofs of the myriad of buildings.

A similar downturn in world demand and markets in potash and salt led to the complete vacating by its residents of Dallol in Ethiopia. The town had done well to become established in its halcyon days as in the 1960's it had the dubious honour of recording the highest temperature for an inhabited place at 35 degrees celsius.

In a simpler age the East Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy, a thriving settlement, was vacated due to a combination of the Black Death, changes in the local Medieval economy and the increased value of sheep farming over the growing of arable crops with the consequences of a massive down scaling of livelihoods for many families.

Similar fates were suffered in successive centuries with the failure of local fishing industries such as in Great Blasket Island in Eire which led to the depletion of population to only 22 in 1953.

War and political events have imposed conditions on towns and cities causing residents to flee, be evacuated or just give up and drift away.

In 1923 the town of Kayakov in south west Turkey had been home to a predominantly Greek Christian population. The dramatic exchanges of territory between Turkey and Greece led to the abandonment by the indigenous population within a few years.

Cradour sur Glane in France has been left in ruins intentionally as a memorial to successive generations of the barbarism of war. In 1944 in a retaliatory action by the Waffen SS after persistent attacks by partisan groups some 642 residents, amongst them 205 children and 247 women were massacred. Charles de Gaulle decreed that the town be protected in its ruinous state.

Whatever the reasons for enforced abandonment by humans many such settlements are in peril of being overrun by the very forces of nature that had to be placated and suppressed in the first place. There is some irony in that.