Field research

One of the attractions of researching landscape history is the opportunity to combine a range of sources of evidence: direct investigation in the field, archival documents, maps, aerial photography and satellite imagery, and the testimony of people both in the past and the present through their remembered experiences, art, stories and perceptions. When studying a largely agricultural landscape a rich coming together of all of these elements can be found in the seemingly prosaic study of the names given to individual fields and enclosures by those who have worked the land. 

This is of particular current interest to me as I am working through the tithe maps for one of my PhD case study areas, the cluster of medieval manors on the edge of the Black Mountains over which Llanthony Priory had lordship from the early twelfth century until its dissolution in the mid-sixteenth century. The production of tithe maps for most parishes and townships across England and Wales was a result of the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 which sought to rationale the archaic system by which communities had to provide their local church with a tenth, a tithe, of their agricultural produce and related resources through the replacement of this ancient practise with its roots in the Anglo-Saxon period with a cash payment. In order to implement this change the Herculean task of establishing who owned and farmed what land had to be carried out so that the new payments in cash could be calculated, and thus an accurately surveyed map and accompanying apportionment schedule recording land-use, who owned what and who occupied which farmsteads down to every last field, acre, perch and rood was produced for each parish over the following twenty years or so. These magical remnants of typically Victorian thoroughness and efficiency provide a latter day 'Domesday Book' snapshot of the agricultural landscape in the mid nineteenth century. A rich historical record that acts as an invaluable bridge between what we know about the 'in living memory' changes in the landscape over the last hundred years or so and the more dimly lit centuries that preceded the upheavals of the later nineteenth century.

Section of the tithe map for the parish of Upper Cwmyoy (showing Llanthony Priory), produced in 1852 (courtesy of http://cynefin.archiveswales.org.uk)

As they proceeded around each parish the tithe commissioners undertaking this exercise not only allocated a number to each field they mapped but also enquired of and recorded any names by which they were locally known, in order to reduce any ambiguity or confusion when the maps and schedules were examined by the farmers and land-owners of the parish. To the twenty-first century observer it is these field names that particularly help to bring the landscape of the time alive; though with some caveats: firstly not all fields had a name recorded (either because there was no such name, it may have been forgotten by or not be known to the current occupier or perhaps simply not followed up as the deadline for completing the survey loomed); and so, for some parishes, this data-set can be frustratingly incomplete. A more mundane characteristic of many field names is that they are often, well, rather mundane; for the very good reason that farmers did not allocate names to fields for the benefit of excitable landscape researchers and local historians, they did so to aid everyday working, communication and planning. Hence the proliferation of 'Big meadow', 'Field above the barn', 'Four acre field', 'Little croft' and many other similarly descriptive but rather uninspiring monikers. However, amongst this functionality can be found hidden gems that enrich our understanding of land management, landscape change, the vernacular lexicon of place words and terms and sometimes provide clues to the lost history of a particular patch of land.

Section of the tithe apportionment for the parish of Upper Cwmyoy (courtesy of http://cynefin.archiveswales.org.uk)

In my own research area there are many fields with a number but no name and no shortage of 'Upper meadow's, 'Lower orchard's, 'Big wood pasture's and the like. However, I have also found many leads to help provide a clearer picture of how the landscape has developed, with the added twist/ frustration that, hard on the border between England and Wales, some names are 'standard' English, some use Herefordshire dialect words, some are 'Gwentian' Welsh (a largely lost variation of Welsh from the south-east border area of the country), some a hybrid whilst others have morphed into strange corruptions of their original meaning, often through mishearing or incorrect transcribing on the part of those recording the information struggling to understand the mumbled or heavily accented oral testimony of the local farm workers.

'The Mote' field, Trefeddw farm.

This exercise has enabled my inner landscape detective to follow multiple pathways. The strange sounding name 'Poorcas' (or variations of) proliferates, mostly attached to large enclosures on the higher valley sides, and led to much initial head-scratching. A possible derivation is from the Welsh words por meaning pasture and cae for field: a finely-grained venacular descriptor for this topographically specific enclosure type. Other names are helping in the task of tracing the landscape of earlier times. For instance, within a field called 'The Mote' (pictured above) lies what remains of a motte and bailey fortification rising out of the fertile red earth, a remnant of the westward advance of Anglo-Norman control in this borderland region during the eleventh century which may be the foci of the medieval manor of Redcastle, now lost as a place name in local memory. A mile or so up the Vale of Ewyas lies the hamlet of Cwmyoy and within the cool stone of its quiet church can be found an impressively intact medieval cross with a carving of Christ still standing out in clear relief (pictured above). Local lore has it that this artifact was dug up from a nearby field over a hundred years ago. A few minutes walk from the church lies 'Cross field' (pictured below), under the turf of which the cross was perhaps hurriedly buried before the iconoclasts of the Reformation could bring their hammers to it; the likely original location further uphill at the cross roads of 'Groes Llwyd' (holy cross).    

'Cross field' occupying the rising ground below the hillside with the church of Cwmyoy behind the trees to the left.

On a more utilitarian note, a number of mills are recorded for Llanthony Priory's medieval manors in the area. The built remains of a number of later mills may occupy the location of an earlier manifestation, however the tithe maps provide further possible sites at 'Cae hen felin' (old mill field), 'Cae pandy' (fulling mill field) and 'Old mill meadow' that, when visited, provide field evidence of probable use as a mill; activity in the landscape long forgotten by the time the first edition Ordnance Survey map for the area, which makes no reference to any of these sites, was produced. Field names can also be used to help to piece together the routes along which people and livestock moved through the landscape before the modern metalled road network developed. Names such as 'Cae Rewen' (from rhiw meaning steep road), 'Field above the road', and 'Whiels' (from heol meaning road) hint at the previous importance of now backwater field paths and tracks. One such holloway track, now disused, leads up to the common grazing land of the higher slopes of Hatterall Hill from a large field called 'Bugley meadow' (pictured below), a pleasant but incongruous sounding name until it is realised that this is probably a corruption of the old Welsh word for shepherd, bugail. This meadow, which visitors to Llanthony's ruins drive right past and also holds the annual Llanthony and District Show, contains an earthwork platform that may have been the site of the Priory's sheepcote for holding its flocks when they were brought down from their upland summer grazing. As for 'Caden will', 'Pic', 'Ropine' and 'Sole figin', their meaning remains mysterious; conversations with local farmers may illuminate some, but others are no doubt lost to history. 

'Bugley meadow', Court Farm, Llanthony

A listing of some of the more interesting or distinctive field name elements in the Llanthony area can be found in the table at the end of this piece (with some meanings still to be uncovered: if anyone can shed any light on these then please let me know).

Original tithe maps and apportionments are generally held at county and national archives and many are now digitised, with all for Wales available on the Archives Wales website.  

A particularly useful resource in the study of field names generally is provided by, the now out of print, English Field Names: A Dictionary by John Field (who else!). The book not only collects the many regional words for different types of enclosure but also demonstrates the more esoteric and playful side of naming different plots of agricultural land: 'Babylon' - remote land beyond the river; 'Chemistry' - land on which artificial fertilisers were used; 'Cocked hat' - land shaped like a tricorne hat; 'Lazy lands' - a derogatory term for unproductive land; 'Thousand Acre' - ironic term for small field; 'Unthank Bottom' - land occupied by squatters; and hundreds more such inventive names conjured by our clever but largely illiterate forebears, who knew the land around them literally by name. 

Field name element Bach	Meaning Little	Language Welsh
Bank/ banky/ banc	Slope	English/ Welsh
Berrion/ errion/ errewan	Possibly from y berllan = orchard	Welsh
Beach	Beach trees	English
Beak	Land reclaimed for ploughing	English
Brake	Waste covered in brushwood	English
Brink	Possibly from bryn = hill	Welsh
Bagley/ bugley	From Bugail = shepherd	Welsh
Bushy	Land covered in bushes	English
Caden will	?	?
Cae	Field	Welsh
Caer	Wall (or cae'r = field of the)	Welsh
Canol/ cenol	Middle	Welsh
Carn	Crooked or stony hillock	Welsh
Cellan	Possibly from celyn = holly	Welsh
Chwarel	Quarry	Welsh
Coed	Wood	Welsh
Common	Common land	English
Cover	Overgrown field for game	English
Croft/ crofty	Small enclosure near house	English
Crooked	Crooked	English
Cross	Cross	English
Crow	Crow	English
Cwm	Valley	Welsh
Cwrgy	Cwr = edge or cwar = quarry	Welsh
Darren	Rocky cliff	Welsh
David	Possibly from dafad = sheep	Welsh?
Delyn	From telyn = harp	Welsh
Dingle	Deep wooded hollow	English
Dol/ dole/ dolu/ dolau	Meadow	Welsh
Draining	Well drained	English
Duelt	Possibly from ddu = black, dark + allt = woody cliff	Welsh
Errion/ errewen/ errule/ erewin	Possibly from y rhiw = steep path, hillside or slope	Welsh
Farthing	Fourth part	English
Fawr/ vawr	Great	Welsh
ffynon/ ffenno	Spring or well	Welsh
Fine	Possibly from ffynon = spring or well	Welsh?
Fierben?	?	?
Flat	Flat	English
Garrivel	Possibly from chwarel = quarry	Welsh
Garw/ Gwrw	Rough	Welsh
Glas	Notably green or marshy	Welsh
Glwydd	Bank or ditch	Welsh
Gorgy	?	?
Grazing	Grazing	English
Green	Notably green or marshy	English
Grone	Possibly from gronyn = grain	Welsh
Gros	Possibly from groes = cross	Welsh
Gruffdupin	?	?
Gunters	Local personal name	Welsh
Gwillen/ guillen	Possibly from Gwillim personal name	Welsh
Gwyn	White	Welsh
Holly/ Holleys	Holly tree	English
Horse	Land on which horses are kept	English
Horsley	Possibly land on which horses are kept	English?
Isha/ Isser	Lower	Welsh
Kiln	Lime kiln	English
Leak	?	English
Lluaddu	Possibly from lludw = ash	Welsh
Llwyd	Brown or grey	Welsh
Loney	Possibly from llwyn = grove	Welsh?
Loom	?	?
Maes	Meadow, field or ploughed land	Welsh
Markel	Possibly from mark = boundary	?
Mawr	Big, great or large	Welsh
Mellin	From melin = mill	Welsh
Nant	Stream	Welsh
Narrow	Narrow strip of land	English
New ground	Land newly cultivated or enclosed	English
Newydd	New	Welsh
Oak	Oak tree	English
Old wood	Previously wooded land	English
Orchard	Orchard	English
Orles	Land on which alders grow	Welsh
Ox	Oxen	English
Pandy	Fulling mill	Welsh
Park	Parkland	English
Pasture	Pasture	English
Patch	Small piece of land	English
Peck	?	?
Pen	End or top (W), or small enclosure (Eng)	?
Penhead	end or top head	Hybrid
Perkins	?	?
Perrott/ Perrow	Local personal name	Welsh
Perthy	Hedge or bush	Welsh
Pic	?	?
Piece	Piece of land	English
Pikey	Pointed piece of land	English
Pin	Fir or pine, or pin, or pen	Welsh
Pistil/ pisty/ pestae	From pistyll = spout or cataract	Welsh
Pleck/ plock	Small piece of land	English
Plot	Small piece of ground or allotment	English
Pool/ poole	Pool or pond	English
Poorcas/ porkin/ pulcas/ puscas/ porking/ poorcat	Possibly from Por = pasture or grass + cae = field, or poor field? Most tend to be large enclosures of pasture on higher slope	Welsh
Porth	Gate	Welsh
Put	?	?
Pwillen	Possibly from pwll = pit, pool or pond	Welsh
Queer	Unusual?	English
Restree	Possibly from rhes = line or row	Welsh
Rick/ rickhole/ ricket	Hay rick	English
Rider	Possibly from rhyd = ford	Welsh
Rocks hill	Rocky land	English
Ropin/ ropine	?	?
Rotten	Poor quality	English
Salpot	Possibly from sallow = willow + pot = deep hole, land covered in holes	English
Serth	Steep	Welsh
Sheckwell	?	English
Sheep walk	Upland sheep pasture	English
Shop	Shed	English
Skybor/ scybor	From ysgabor = barn	Welsh
Slang	Narrow strip of land	English
Slip/ slipper	Small strip of land	English
Slottick	Possibly from silotog = productive, abounding in seedlings	?
Sole figin	?	?
Soundr	?	?
Square	Square	English
Tilley	Possibly from tillage = land enclosed for arable use; Or corruption of name of nearby farmstead of Tylau	?
Tir/ tyr	Land	Welsh
Troustree	? + possibly tri = three	?
Tump/ tumpy	Hillock	English
Ty	House	Welsh
Tyle	Slope, hill	Welsh
Tyning	Land enclosed with a fence	English
Ucha/ ushaf	Upper	Welsh
War	Possibly from gwar = above	Welsh
Warheal	Possibly from gwar = above + heol = road	Welsh
Warren	Rabbit warren	English
Well	Land by or with a well or spring	English
Wern	Alder trees or watery	Welsh
Whiels	Possibly from heol = road	Welsh?
Whirrell	From chwarel = quarry	Welsh
Weir	Land by a weir	English
Will	Possibly from heol = road	Welsh?
Worlod/ wolod/ walod/ gwrlod	Meadow	Welsh
Yew Tree	Yew tree	English
Ynis/ ynys	Water meadow, rising ground or island	Welsh

The Dig: a bleak midwinter read

No end of year list this. Just a short recommendation of a short, stark and arresting novel: a bleak midwinter read.

The Dig is Cynan Jones' fourth book, but the first that I have found. It is the story of two men who's lives are ingrained in the cold, sodden fields of the hill country of mid Wales; one a recently bereaved sheep farmer, the other a single-minded badger-baiter. The language and tone of the narrative is sparse and bleak and matter of fact, reflecting the landscape in which the two protagonists edge towards their, seemingly inexorable, fated confluence.

It is clear where most reader's sympathies will lie: with Daniel, the farmer bringing new life at lambing time, sleep-walking through the long hours occupied by memories of his dead wife, rather than the un-named big man with his dogs and his barbarous occupation. But this is an unsentimental picture of rural life and both men are of the land; making a living through their knowledge and understanding of the animals they share their days with. Indeed they are both in some way trapped in their existence in the fields. Of the big man we are told: "He was too much of an instrument to change what he did".

The writing of Cynan Jones has been compared to the visceral narrations of landscape, of nature that characterise the work of Ted Hughes and Cormac McCarthy. I was also reminded of God's Own Country by Ross Raisin, rooted in the North York Moors and the words of its upland anti-hero narrator. The cadence of the writing, seemingly awkward at first, draws the reader into the landscape, pulls you away from the passive gaze of an outsider. 

Reading the book reminded me of two of my own observations from earlier in the year; brief glimpsings that unsettled, and have stayed with me. The first was on a local walk, during a cold and glowering late winter morning. Resting at a field gate affording a fine wide-screen view, I was drawn to the sound of dogs and men closer to hand. Down-slope at the fields edge (the field in these photographs) I surveyed a pick-up truck, its occupants digging in the bank running along the boundary, accompanied by insistent barks. I did not linger, was not seen. But I had seen them and wondered what their labours were in this lonely spot. Perhaps renewing a fence or clearing scrub? This was not the view I came away with though. There was something malevolent in the air. Had I happened across badger-baiters? was the question that nagged for the rest of the day.

A contrasting day and location in the summer: waiting at a rural level crossing in the Aire Valley, North Yorkshire and the only people disembarking into the sunshine from the two carriage diesel unit are a rag tag band of teenage boys; track-suited hyperactivity - lads from the estates of Keighley or Bingley or Bradford, maybe Leeds I surmised. As we waited on opposite sides of the crossing gates their exuberance was a striking counterpoint to the reticent village halt that had just accepted them. Equally frantic dogs accompanied the boys, one of whom carried a wooden box in which his ferrets lurked. As the gates lifted the gang unhesitatingly and knowingly climbed the nearest four bar and raced across the large field adjacent to the station, their released dogs filling its space. Space that minutes earlier had been the benevolent preserve of their prey, gambolling rabbits. I carried on my way as a passing local resident dialled the number of the field's owner.

The Dig gives voice to such encounters at the sharp end of rural life. The story dissects our cosy view of the countryside to reveal the unbidden and often unspoken darkness that lurks at every gate post, in every copse, atop every hill. A reminder that harsh, hard lives and deeds bleed into the landscape still.

The rhiw paths of the Black Mountains: liminal ways, old beyond memory

I have written a piece for The Clearing web site on a very specific genus of pathway, a sub-group which has a particular form, character and locality but remained unburdened by formal categorisation: lonely tracks that stoically climb and crest the hillsides of the Black Mountains; shadow paths, many now no longer or rarely used other than by a small number of local shepherds and farmers, often not appearing on any map. When driving or walking through the Vale of Ewyas, incising the old red sandstone massif of the Black Mountains for twelve sinuous miles with Llanthony its primary locus, these ways – known locally as rhiws - are all around but remain unseen in plain sight; liminal lines in the landscape of the steep valley sides with no meaning or discernible pattern to the casual eye.

You can read the full article here.

'If any solitary wanderers read these notes...'

The delight of opening a book at a random page and finding ...

“This aerial photo might be of many of the hundreds of hidden places in England: here it is used as a diagram to illustrate the fate of ‘escapists’ …”.

Wasdale in the Lake District

The Land of England - Dorothy Hartley (1979)

On lynchets

Hinton, South Gloucestershire

Anyone with an interest in landscape archaeology and landscape history will know well the earthworks, mounds, ditches and ancient trackways that abound across the British Isles: the barrows, hillforts and ‘Celtic’ field systems of prehistory; the motte and bailey fortifications, ridge and furrow patterns, deserted village ‘lumps and bumps’ and holloways of the medieval period.

Sometimes hard to trace on the ground or on maps such features are brought strikingly to life through aerial photographs and, perhaps most clearly, topographical survey plans. There is something deeply aesthetically pleasing about the way the hachured symbols of the plan bring clarity, order and beauty to even the most functionally mundane relic of past human endeavour.

www.cpat.org.uk

Once you know what to look for, identifying these features enhances time spent out in the landscape. A walk in even the seemingly most unspectacular country can yield a dried up fishpond hidden in the brambles, pillow mounds in which rabbits were once bred as much needed peasant meat or the trace of a World War II gun emplacement.

The earthwork relic that has come to fascinate me the most is the medieval strip lynchet (from the Old English hlinc - 'ridges, terraces of sloping ground'). Lynchets manifest themselves as a series or flight of stepped terraces, normally visible on now turfed hill-sides. Most prevalent in the steep-sided valleys of the South West, the Cotswolds and North Yorkshire (where they are known as 'raines') but also found in hill country across many parts of Britain, they represent the fossilised remains of ploughing; essentially the hill slope equivalent (and sometimes an extension) of the more widely known ridge and furrow patterns on level ground. Not necessarily consciously created as a feature in themselves, though some initial construction may have been required on the steepest ground, the lynchets are the result of the repeated action of the plough's mould-board turning the loosened soil outwards and downwards; over time forming a level strip or tread for cultivation with a scarp slope (a 'riser') down to the next strip below. Generally, and reflecting the practical nature of their creation, they follow the contour lines of the natural slope and are usually between 60 and 250 yards in length.   

Hawkesbury Upton, the Cotswolds

Cold Ashton, the Cotswolds

Originally thought to be evidence of Roman or medieval vineyards (in the Pennines?), more detailed study has now clearly shown that, in most cases, they represent the communal efforts of medieval peasant farmers to bring marginal hilly ground into cultivation where the supply of good quality lower level arable land was in short supply; in the words of Richard Muir, '... it seems likely that many systems of strip lynchets exist as memorials to communities afflicted by overpopulation and landhunger'. During the early fourteenth century, and up to the onset of the Black Death in 1348, the population had seen sustained increases that were putting huge pressures on the agricultural resources then available. It is during this period that, through sheer desperation and much arduous effort, the ploughing of this tough ground would have mostly taken place. Once formed, the terraced tread would provide new fertile land on which to grow corn and other crops, as well as richer grazing for animals. Probably the most well-known example of medieval lynchets are the terraces that adorn the steep slopes of Glastonbury Tor, although no doubt there are other less utilitarian theories as to their origin in this sacred place. Of course, this is not purely a medieval or British landscape feature, as the terraced hill-sides of the uplands of South America and Asia testify. 

Dyrham, South Gloucestershire

As pressure on the land reduced due to a falling population post the Black Death, and contemporaneous with the desertion of whole settlements and other areas of cultivation, many lynchets would have returned to marginal pasture or scrub land. However, and as ever, this was not a planned and uniform development. In some areas cultivation may have continued until the processes of enclosure began to take root in the later medieval period, with such land then turned over to sheep. In other cases the formations that we see today were fossilised in the deer parks and Arcadian designed landscapes of country houses; yet another form of dispossession of the many by the few. There are a few places, like Coombe Bisset in Wiltshire, where terraced lynchets have remained in cultivation up to the present day, though this is normally on gentler slopes.

Lynchets in parkland, Milnthorpe, Lancashire

Appletreewick, Wharfedale, Yorkshire Dales

As with other topographical features there is scope for misinterpretation when examining lynchets. Natural features formed by processes of erosion, soil creep and river action can be mistaken for man-made terraces, particularly at a distance. Some lynchets can also be found that are likely to be prehistoric in origin. The best examples are in the chalk downland of Wessex and south-east England, rectangular in character and much wider (often in excess of 100 feet) than their medieval counterparts. Although less is known of the origins and use of these systems, it would seem likely that they were abandoned when settlements began to move down to the more fertile soils of the valleys and remain as traces of early organised agriculture on the dry, thin-soiled turf of the downs.   

Hinton, South Gloucestershire

For me the poignancy of strip lynchets is that, unlike the topographical reminder of elites and power embodied by say a Neolithic barrow or an Iron Age hillfort, they are examples of hard-won everyday landscape features created by working people: the very people whose toil set the template for the countryside we see today in many parts of the British Isles. They also remind us, however, of the changing character of the landscape; the seemingly timeless pastoral, sheep-cropped scene beloved of photographers of the Yorkshire Dales or the Cotswolds that was once the stage for a thousand peasant families and communities using their collective labour and ingenuity to avoid famine.

Wharfedale, Yorkshire Dales

References

Aston, M, 2004. Interpreting the Landscape: Landscape Archaeology and Local History. Routledge.

Baker, A and Butlin, R (Eds.), 1973. Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles. Cambridge University Press.

Cunliffe, B (Ed.), 2006. England's Landscape: The West. Harper Collins. 

Field, J, 1989. English Field Names: A Dictionary. Alan Sutton.

Hoskins, W, 1985. The Making of the English Landscape. Penguin.

Muir, R, 2004. Landscape Encyclopedia. Windgather Press.

Platt, C, 1978. Medieval England: A Social History and Archaeology from the Conquest to 1600AD. Routledge.

Raistrick, A, 1979. The Making of the English Landscape: West Riding of Yorkshire. Hodder and Stoughton.

Taylor, C, 1975. Fields in the English Landscape. Dent.

Taylor, C, 1974. Fieldwork in Medieval Archaeology. Batsford.