Shropshire Routes to Roots

Farming changes: A short history of field formation in Shropshire

People have been farming in Shropshire for more than 6,000 years. The earliest evidence of farming in the Shropshire landscape are the small square prehistoric fields marked out with banks known as lynchets. These can be found on the southern slopes of the Long Mynd.

Stone headed axes would have been used to fell trees to clear farmland and to shape timber for building. Polished stone axeheads that have been found in Shropshire date from the Neolithic period (6,000 - 4,400 years ago). Originally the axehead would have fitted into a slot in a long wooden handle but these have long since rotted away. Examination of the axe heads under a microscope has revealed that particularly hard varieties of rock were selected to make them. The rock was often quarried far from where the axe was later found. Some of the axeheads found in Shropshire were quarried in the Lake District and in Leicestershire.

The arrival of the Roman army in Shropshire and the establishment of towns would have created new markets for farm produce. Aerial surveys have revealed numerous small farmsteads which appear in arable fields as cropmarks. Cropmarks are formed when buried archaeological features affect the growth of the plants above them. A ditch or pit will provide a damper deep and loose soil. This will encourage lush plant growth and crops will grow taller and ripen more slowly. However, the roots of plants growing above a buried wall or bank will find a drier shallow and compacted soil. This will stunt plant growth making crops shorter and ripen earlier.

In Medieval times open fields were divided into strips which were worked by different farmers. These strips can still be seen at sites such as Burley where the fields are corrugated by Medieval ridge and furrow. (Burley is situated in the Corve Dale, less than 1 mile south west of Culmington off the B4365.) Burley was the site of a Medieval village but has since shrunk to a single farm. However, the remains of the surrounding ridge and furrow fields survive in the landscape as slight features visible from the air as shadowmarks. The fields are on private land, however they can be seen from the road and a number of public footpaths in the vicinity.

The term Ridge and Furrow is used to describe these characteristic corrugated fields of the Medieval period. Ridge and furrow is formed when neighbouring strips are ploughed in the opposite direction. This turns the soil of the two strips inwards towards the central boundary. Over the years this forms a central ridge and a furrow on either side. It is thought that this process was also used to improve land drainage as it creates regular ditches.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries new field patterns were being laid out as each farmer's strips were merged into one enclosed field. The regular shaped fields and wide straight enclosure roads are still very much part of the Shropshire countryside Hedges were planted in utilitarian straight lines with "quicks" (hawthorn). Such enclosure of land required Acts of Enclosure from Parliament and the Shropshire Hills have some of the latest enclosures giving large and functional field shapes.

This pattern of fields more or less underlies what we see today.

Hedgerows - threads of the landscape

We like to think that hedgerows are quintessentially British - stitching our landscape together. They can in fact be found all over the world - particularly in hilly lands, close to settlements and where colonists have taken them.

There are hedgerows and there are hedgerows. Developed over time and planted for various reasons they can tell us a great deal about the past. Just two of the hedgerows types to look out for include:

Holly: You can imagine holly as a good stock proof hedge giving shelter to stock. But can you imagine it as a fodder crop? Ouch! This was one of its important uses, particularly for the poorer squatter settlements found around the Clee Hills. It is around this area that you can see the holly hedges today.

Laburnum: Why plant a poisonous hedge? In the Shropshire Hills such laburnum hedges can be found to the west of the Stiperstones and around the Brown Clee. But why? One theory is that local miners and smallholders used it as replacement handles for their picks and shovels - a poor mans hickory. A further suggestion is that the purple heartwood and yellow sapwood of the laburnum was attractive and tough enough to be used in craft work, an important part of the income for self-sufficient farmers of the area.

To keep hedges alive and stock proof they were, and still are, pleached. Pleaching or laying involved slicing in to the stem and bending over the bush, one after another. Still connected to the root through the pleach the hedge continued to thrive. You will see a lot of this management in the Shropshire Hills.