Ridge and furrow

Ridge and furrow is an archaeological pattern of ridges (Medieval Latin sliones) and troughs created by a system of ploughing used in Europe during the Middle Ages, typical of the open field system. It is also known as Rig (or rigg) and furrow, mostly in the North East of England and Scotland.

The earliest examples date to the immediate post-Roman period and the system was used until the 17th century in some areas, as long as the open field system survived. Surviving ridge and furrow topography is found in Great Britain, Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. The surviving ridges are parallel, ranging from 3 to 22 yards (3 to 20 m) apart and up to 24 inches (61 cm) tall – they were much taller when in use. Older examples are often curved.

Ridge and furrow topography was a result of ploughing with non-reversible ploughs on the same strip of land each year. It is visible on land that was ploughed in the Middle Ages, but which has not been ploughed since then. No actively ploughed ridge and furrow survives.

The ridges or lands became units in landholding, in assessing the work of the ploughman and in reaping in autumn.

Traditional ploughs turn the soil over in one direction, with the ploughshare and moldboard to the right (see Single-sided ploughing). This means that the plough cannot return along the same furrow. Instead, ploughing is done in a clockwise direction around a long rectangular strip (a land). After ploughing one of the long sides of the strip, the plough is removed from the ground, moved across the unploughed headland (the short end of the strip), then put back in the ground to work back down the other long side of the strip. The width of the ploughed strip is fairly narrow, to avoid having to drag the plough too far across the headland. This process has the effect of moving the soil in each half of the strip one furrow's-width towards the centre line.

In the Middle Ages each strip was managed by one small family, within large open fields held in common (see strip cultivation), and the location of the ploughing was the same each year. The movement of soil year after year gradually built the centre of the strip up into a ridge, leaving a dip, or "furrow" between each ridge (note that this use of "furrow" is different from that for the furrow left by each pass of the plough). The building up of a ridge was called filling or gathering, and was sometimes done before ploughing began. The raised ridges offered better drainage in a wet climate: moisture drained into the furrows, and since the ridges were laid down a slope, in a sloping field water would collect in a ditch at the bottom. Only on some well-drained soils were the fields left flat. In damper soil towards the base of the ridge, pulses might be sown where wheat would have been drowned, as Thomas Tusser suggests in the 16th century:

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