Medieval Way has a new and informative video about ridge-and-furrow cultivation in the English midlands in the medieval and early modern periods before the enclosures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created so much of the landscape we recognise today.
Ploughing in the common fields
This may be depicting the plough team turning onto the headland
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The video explains the thinking behind the earlier system and illustrates the mechanics of creating the all-important strips, with their ridges and furrows, and what can still be seen by field walking or aerial photography.
The video can be seen at Medieval Way
There is an online 2013 article from Medieval Histories about adding to academic understanding of the significance of the heavy plough between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries which can be seen at The Heavy Plough and the Economic Development AD 900 -1300
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