Selected projects
4.19.10 Conserving open field systems in the East Midlands
This Monuments Protection Programme project was commissioned to assess the survival in the current landscape of medieval open field systems in the Midland core of the Central Province defined by Roberts and Wrathmell's Settlement Mapping project. For the purposes of the project, ridge and furrow, because of its archaeological visibility, was taken as the prime indicator of open fields, but the 'monument' was defined more broadly to include all aspects of township-based medieval open field systems. The project was undertaken by Northamptonshire Heritage on behalf of English Heritage and the neighbouring Midland counties.
The first task was the classification and the preparation of a new Monument Class Description for open fields in the central and eastern Midlands. This demonstrated the role of ridge and furrow as the principal way in which open fields are manifest in the present countryside. Following on from this, surviving ridge and furrow in a large multi-county area of the east Midlands was mapped from available aerial photography (mostly of c 1990 date) and the distribution was assessed using GIS analysis in relation to woodland and meadow distributions; this assessment took place within the context of townships, which form the territorial framework for open fields. The overall objective of the project was to select 'priority townships', ie. those with the best survival of ridge and furrow on an extensive scale, as a nationally important sample suitable for active management and preservation.
The study area contained 1577 modern civil parishes and urban areas, but it is estimated that there were about 2000 medieval townships. Initially 140 of these townships were short-listed, leading to the final list of 43 priority townships. A gazetteer lists the 43 townships (lying in 40 civil parishes) defined by the criteria of field system completeness, compactness of sample, association with village earthworks, and the quality of the historical documentation. Each example is accompanied by a map, and recommendations are discussed for preservation by scheduling or by other methods, and for the detailed recording of significant examples that might be destroyed. Contrary to the widely held view that ridge and furrow is commonplace and ubiquitous in the Midlands, only seven of the townships have more than 40% ridge and furrow survival, and only one, in Warwickshire, has anywhere near approaching total survival (c 70%). The total of 18,879 (7640 ha) acres of ridge and furrow in the 43 townships includes many isolated fields not part of consolidated blocks, and large intact blocks are relatively rare. Sixteen of the townships had been previously identified as having important settlement remains in the Monuments Protection Programme settlement analysis.
The study area lies within Roberts' 'Central Province' and in the Middle Ages most of this area had a landscape of nucleated villages with extensive open fields, and 40 of the 43 selected examples are from this type of vill, lying in three of Roberts' local regions. There are also several small local regions in the study area with slightly dispersed settlement, and few of these possess much ridge and furrow. Comparison with evidence from photographs taken in the late 1940s demonstrates that loss and destruction has been severe over the last 50 years.
The list of 43 priority townships is already in use in the relevant Sites and Monuments Records to guide planning and land management decisions, but the long-term protection of these areas (whose rarity has now been clearly demonstrated by the project) is a challenging task. The next step is to conduct up-to-date aerial reconnaissance, which the Monument Protection Programme has commissioned, to confirm the precise extent of survival to the present day. This will better inform conservation priorities, although it is likely that a variety of approaches will be needed to manage and conserve this dwindling resource. Incentives such as Countryside Commission schemes have proved useful, although their impact is limited and they currently have a limited operational life (ten years). Future changes to the Common Agricultural Policy might, eventually, direct some European funding into retention of permanent pasture. This would operate in parallel with environmental requirements, Biodiversity Action Plans, and schemes pursuant to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, none of which ensures preservation at present. A further approach might be to alert the National Trust to the landscape importance of ridge and furrow, with a view to purchasing land as it becomes available, and to encourage large estates to take the protection of ridge and furrow into account in their farm management strategies.
Another mechanism, however, which will need careful thought and discussion, might be to use scheduled monument controls. This would provide an effective long-term preservation strategy, but its application to such extensive areas presents many practical problems. These include the resources needed to undertake scheduling of such large areas in the first place, and the potential costs of refusal of Scheduled Monument Consent for ploughing. Scheduling itself does not guarantee proper management, however, and additional action and management would always also be necessary.
The examples identified in the course of this project represent the best survival in the East Midlands. A very rapid survey was also carried out in 1998 of all English Sites and Monuments Records to generate some comparative data by providing information on current survival in the rest of the country. This demonstrated, by a simple classification into areas with much, little, or very low or no ridge and furrow, that no other comparably-sized regions now possess ridge and furrow remains of open fields on a similarly extensive scale. There are small pockets of ridge and furrow survival, and of course areas of ridge and furrow surrounding individual settlement sites, which Monument Protection Programme scheduling can deal with case-by-case as appropriate, but only in the East Midlands is there a nationally important resource of large-scale open field ridge and furrow survival.
The significance of the best townships identified in the east Midlands cannot therefore be overemphasised. That only 43 can be identified as having high survival out of 2000 in the region is a striking measure of their rarity. Very little ridge and furrow survives elsewhere in Europe and preservation of the few good English areas is urgent from a European perspective, because they represent the best examples of an agricultural system that dominated northern Europe for 1000 years. Unless appropriate action is taken soon, ploughing and other destruction will continue unchecked, and none of the large areas of relict open fields will survive.