Ridge & Furrow at St Oswalds Golf Course

Yesterday we took a walk down the footpaths that enclose the northern part (Holes 9-18) of St Oswalds Golf Course in Durham. This northern part preserves a ridge & furrow field system – a system which has a millennium of history behind it. It could date back to Anglo-Saxon times and was characteristic of the pre-enclosure agriculture system of medieval age, but continued in modified form through the 19th century. Technically, as David Hall states in his enlightening article, the strict date of the field is when it was last
plowed (ploughed) – usually coinciding with its enclosure.
 

Each ridge in the system belonged to a specific farmer, and typically the farmer would cultivate ridge strips in different areas of the village's holding to maximize (maximise) the odds of successful yields. He would plow (plough) it with a single-direction plough in a clockwise fashion starting from the center (centre) of the strip. This would intentionally throw up the soil towards the center of the ridge and create a furrow between the ridges. The ridge would then forming a well-drained seedbed which was planted in 3-year crop rotation: wheat and barley, then beans and peas, then left fallow for a year.

   The size and shape of the ridges are characteristic of time and place: early ridges were about 8m wide and 1000m long (that's a kilometer!). But the fenland ridges were 15m wide x 1500m long. In the 19th century, some ridges grew to 20m wide in the southeast, or narrowed to 2-3m in the northwest. The ones at St Oswalds are about 2-3m wide; they are deemed to be post-medieval 19th-century fields.

   Ridge & furrow only survive in areas that haven't been subsequently plowed after the enclosure act; most are pasture and many can be seen in the north on the train ride from London to Durham. The examples at St Oswalds might be seeing the end of their days, as a big development company is wanting to turn the golf course into housing for 1000 students, 72 executive homes and 150-250 homes for plebs. 

References:
Hall, David (1998) "Medieval fields in their many forms." British Archaeology 33
Durham County Council "Durham City greenbelt site assessment, part 2: site 7".