Revisions in Economic History
XI. Ridge and Furrow and the Open Fields
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4352960 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M W Beresford (University of Leeds, corresponding author), MW Beresford (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1948 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 34 |
| Publication date | 1948-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2590002 |
| OpenAlex | W4231245599 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
TFi~iHis article follows Professor Tawney's injunction to historians to lay aside their books in favour of their 'boots'. From observation in the fields, from work on maps of the sixteenth century onwards, from documents and from a modicum of books it puts forward a simple argument. The lay-out of strips, furlongs and fields in pre-enclosure parishes is already familiar to students who have worked on strip-maps or who have seen such printed reproductions as those by Mowat, Fowler or the Orwins. The number of such stripmaps is small, and for some counties non-existent. It is the argument of this article that the reconstruction and study of the pattern of the open fields in any parish does not depend on the lucky survival of a strip-map or a detailed land terrier of pre-enclosure date. We shall argue that the ridge-and-furrow pattern visible in many Midland fields, and elsewhere, is in fact the pattern of the strips of the open field, fossilized as it were, and unobliterated by the newer alignment of hedges or by the ploughing demands of three wars. This opens up a wide prospect of remapping the appearance of any parish before enclosure-indeed, of remapping a wide area: wherever, in fact, the historian has good boots and a 6 in. Ordnance Map. Ridge and furrow is a familiar sight to those who look out of railway-carriage windows,' and space will not be taken here in describing it. Since the publication of the Orwins' book it is also unnecessary to describe how the strips of the open fields, by the natural movement of soil in ploughing, acquired their ridges and their boundary furrows; or how generations of ploughing the same strips in the same direction between the same bounds gave them even more striking hills and dales. It was between two of these ridges that Swift made Lemuel Gulliver spend his first night in Brobdingnag, and some of the high-backed ridges inheavy clay country almost make the fantasy possible.2 The sinuous S shape of the strip was first recognized by Maitland3 as being drawn not with a rod but with a plough; and the yearly movement of the soil by the ploughshare has bitten deeply, almost into the subsoil. Farmers who have tried to exterminate the ridges will tell of the persistence with which even the most cross-ploughed field will acquire its furrows again as soon as the first heavy rain has settled the
Economics · Political science · Ridge · Economic Theory and Institutions · Geology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Paleontology
Which Way to Till This Field? The Cultural Selection of Surface Form in the Rise and Fall of Cultivation Ridges in Northwestern Europe
A classification of ridge and furrow by an analysis of cross-profiles
The Mapping of Abandoned Farmland in Upland Britain
Historical parcellation and ridge-and-furrow relics of open strip-fields in the north-west European lowlands
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,1 |
| Citation span | 1976 - 2022 (47) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |