Fields, Hedges and Ditches

The fields of the cultivated rural landscape are the result of centuries of labour and planning, and have much to tell us about the life and work of our ancestors. They have been hewn from nature and adapted to changing needs, and their present boundaries may preserve the memory of a Roman road, a medieval peasant, a Hanoverian Act of Parliament or a Victorian magnate. This book describes the making and changing of the field system and the part played in it by the engineer and the industrialist as well as by the farmer. It explains where the open-field system can still be seen in operation, how certain ridges and hedges recall the medieval ox-teams, why Thomas a Becket and P. B. Shelley deserve a place in farming history, why the field patterns of some areas are irregular and others orderly, and what evidence Victorian novels provide of the importance of land drainage.