Photograph Notes: I have to confess that my understanding of mediaeval farming methods is pretty poor, but this is probably the first time I am confident enough to say that this is definitely an example of rig (or ridge, as it is called in most of England) and furrow farming. Occasionally OS maps denote it in their old-fashioned Gothic script but I have never before obviously seen it on the ground. (This is a slight concern as it isn't mentioned at this location on any maps!). But apparently it is often more visible at dawn or dusk than in normal daytime hours - this picture was taken about 20 minutes after the sun set. The dark bits of grass are the furrows where the crops would have been grown. From what I can gather from limited online sources early ploughs used to deposit a lot of their churned/tilled soil to the right, and this made the area to the right too difficult to plough due to these newly-formed ridges being too high to plough with any success. So the small ridges got left alone and the early farmers would concentrate on the unaffected land to the right of these ridges. As this happened year after year the rigs (or ridges) got higher and everything became more pronounced. Plus the small-scale mountain/valley topography meant that a lot of water gathered in the furrows, increasing their fertility. It is said that it used to be that individual families would farm individual furrows in mediaeval communities. And that the field systems they created live on when former arable land has turned into grazing land, as is definitely the case here. A furlong, only now ever encountered in horse racing, is 1/8 of a mile, or 220 yards. This is supposedly because a furrow was usually about this length due to 'oxen exhaustion'!
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