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The Walled Landscape

Not all fields have the same character or date.  The central part of the limestone plateau is a good place to explore differences, for here they are often clear-cut.

A typical limestone plateau landscape above Cressbrook

While the lines walls follow can often be hundreds of years old, the walls themselves are always slowly falling down and traditionally have been periodically rebuilt.  Retaining this vital part of the Peak District's character has been one of the major challenges of recent years.  Many walls are now redundant to agricultural requirements and it is often easier to keep a boundary stock-proof with barbed-wire rather than go to the time and expense of wall re-building.   The success of local wall retention, sometimes with the aid of subsidy, can be measured by comparing the many surviving walls in this area with many lowlands where small fields have been amalgamated into large prairies.

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The fields east of Monyash, with many rectangular Post-Medieval fields in areas that were once common (blue), with older fields that fossilise Medieval strip fields (green) close to villages

The village of Flagg (right) is a planned medieval settlement with farmsteads along a single village street, with a fossilised strip field (left) on the gentle slopes above

Medieval Period

From at least as early as 1100 AD and probably from the mid 10th century, Peak District villages each had a small number of very large fields surrounding it, each accessed by tracks from the settlement and divided into many narrow cultivation strips.  These were designed to be farmed communally by the people of the village, both for the lord of the manor and for themselves.

Strip lynchets at Priestcliffe preserve part of the Medieval open field

Each strip was allocated to an individual and they were redistributed each year, every person getting an equal share of good and not so good land.  Different crops, such as cereals, beans and root vegetables, would be planted in each of the larger fields, while others were periodically left fallow and/or used for grazing. Initially none of the strips were bounded by walls or hedges.

However, in some places their positions were often clearly marked by ridge and furrow.  Here, each strip was slightly raised, while its edges were marked by furrows.  Because the soils are thin over much of the central limestone plateau, definition was not great and only in exceptional circumstances is ridge and furrow on flatter land visible today.  The notable exceptions are small areas of strip terraces on slopes that still define individual strips.  Above Bakewell to the west of the town, where the soils are thicker than higher on the plateau, both lynchets and ridge and furrow can be seen from adjacent lanes.

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Strip lynchets above Bakewell to the west are particularly well preserved and form one of the Peak's best-preserved ‘medieval archaeological landscapes'

Late Medieval and Beyond

In many places some of the traditional strips continued in use until the 17th to 18th centuries.  However, there is plenty of evidence that strip layouts were periodically re-designed to suit the needs of different generations.  There is also field evidence that, at the edges of the regularly used fields, there were outfields where strip cultivation only took place occasionally according to need or fluctuations in the climate in different decades.

From the mid-14th century onwards, the farming emphasis swung towards pasture rather than arable because of a worsening of the climate and population decline due to the Black Death and civil strife.  From then on, and perhaps in some cases at an earlier date, the traditional system of strip cultivation increasingly became an anachronism.

An example of mid-14th century enclosure of open fields into strips.

Around some villages large parcels of land were enclosed by boundaries and while the strip divisions were nominally retained, in practice their allocation was used to determine how many animals could be grazed by each person.  In other parts of the fields, small parcels of strips were walled-out (typically these fields survive today as narrow walled enclosures with distinctive curved sides with a reverse-S plan) and, by agreement, each became the long-term property of a specific farmer or the lord of the manor.  Even today, this pattern of ownership can still be glimpsed, where many farms own dispersed parcels of land scattered across the medieval fields.

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Fossilised strip fields from the air, running up to a headland wall and cut by a more recent road, illustrating their narrow sinuous character

Commons

The greater proportion of the central limestone plateau was not part of the strip fields, but lay beyond the banks, ditches or walls that marked their edges.

The open commons were predominantly rough grassland and heather, with trees and shrubs on steeper and more sheltered ground.  They were a vital part of the medieval economy, for the villagers had rights to graze their animals on them, collect fuel in the form of brushwood and peat, quarry stone and collect wild foods such as nuts and berries.

The edges of each township, which lay on the commons, were often unmarked except by occasional boundary stones and natural features.  This led to Medieval disputes over grazing and turbary (peat/soil cutting) rights.  In some cases parts of the commons may have been traditionally used by more than one community.

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This bank and ditch running across the field at Chelmorton, was the Medieval boundary of the village's open fields (behind) and the now-enclosed wastes and commons (foreground)

Enclosure Fields

Many of the white limestone walls that are such an important defining part of the landscape today were built in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

When the commons were enclosed, often in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was the landowners and more important farmers who benefited.  Smallholders and villagers with no traditional rights to field strips lost access to what had been common land and the valuable part of their income it generated.  This often resulted in them having to leave to find employment in growing industrial towns and cities.

At this time the open commons that surrounded the traditional fields around the villages were largely enclosed and divided into many privately-owned fields.  Sometimes, these enclosures were made after private agreement between lords of manors and farmers.  However, where agreement was problematic, individual communities or their ‘lords and masters' applied to Parliament for resolution. After detailed assessment by commissioners, Enclosure Awards were passed to divide the commons amongst people with rights to this land.

One of the early local examples was that for Monyash of 1776.  Here a glance at a detailed modern map shows a clear-cut distinction between earlier small fields around the village and the ruler-straight boundaries of larger and often rectangular fields superimposed on the commons beyond.  Each parcel of land was planned with straight edges on a map before being allocated and its walls built, thus the character of the fields created reflects this.  In previous centuries such an approach would have been unthinkable; earlier fields had more sinuous layouts that were more sensitive to the local topography.

Straight-edged Enclosure Award fields above Monyash

Around most villages the traditional medieval strip fields were gradually subdivided and many small parcels walled out, retaining the sinuous strip edges.  These were primarily used for pasture, although it should be remembered that before the 20th century local communities were far more self-sufficient than today and small areas were always used for arable, the produce used locally.  This said, it was usually livestock that were the mainstay and providers of any cash surplus.

A notable exception to piecemeal enclosure of strip fields is provided by Bakewell.  This town had many smallholders with rights to land, whose main incomes were linked in various ways to its role as a market centre.  As a result, much of the town's strip fields survived until the early 19th century because annual strip redistribution was complex and individual shares particularly fragmented.  The by then archaic farming practices were swept away in one go after an Enclosure Award, under the influence of the powerful lord of the manor, the Duke of Rutland, and extensive areas of new rectangular fields were created.

Bakewells' open fields and strip lynchets have their origins in the early Medieval period

There was also a number of isolated farms on the central plateau, often in less advantageous locations and with medieval origins.  Most of these were built as, or converted to, monastic granges.  Early 17th century maps, the earliest for the region, show that these were surrounded by bounded fields at this date.  It may be that some of these places, particularly where they concentrated on sheep farming, had enclosed fields from their creation in the medieval period, although earthworks at Cronkston for example show that banks and ditches rather than walls were often employed.

A map showing the locations of medieval granges north of Hartington, at Needham, Cronkston, Cotesfield and Pilsbury, based on an early 17th century plan, showing the relationship to other settlement present at that time and where boundary earthworks survive today

For more information on this topic try the archive.

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