Assessing What Remains of Peterborough's Medieval
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SID1722284/1 Paul Hales May 2020 Assessing What Remains of Peterborough’s Medieval Agricultural Landscape Author: Paul Hales SID #: 1722284/1 Supervisor: Andrew Hatton Submission: May 2020 MOD000798 Undergraduate Major Project Word Count: 10,000 BA (Hons) Archaeology and Landscape History SID1722284/1 Paul Hales May 2020 Acknowledgements My thanks to my dissertation supervisor and the Archaeology and Landscape History Degree Course Leader, Andrew (Bob) Hatton MPhil, PGCE, BSc (Hons), HND, MIFL for his endless patience, faith and encouragement. Also grateful thanks to Peterborough City Council Archaeologist, Dr. Rebecca Casa-Hatton MCIfA, without her initial idea, support and enthusiasm this project would never have got going. Thanks to the wider Peterborough City Council Natural Environment Team, for welcoming me albeit temporarily into their team and allowing me to use their knowledge, resources and to drink their tea. To my fellow students at UCP, being voted the most interesting dissertation at the winter conference, was the necessary fillip at just the right time. Finally to my great-grandfather George Hales, the creator of the straightest furrows. BA (Hons) Archaeology & Landscape History - MOD000798 Undergraduate Major Project ii SID1722284/1 Paul Hales May 2020 Abstract My great-grandfather George Hales worked as a ploughman at Powder Blue Farm, just north of Peterborough. George was rightly proud of the fact that his plough horse’s lines and tack were always the neatest and that his furrows were always the straightest. The medieval landscape of ridge and furrow was created by our ancestors over hundreds of years. This report examines the survival of ridge and furrow in the area known as Peterborough Unitary Authority (PUA). It contrasts survival in 2020 with what has been recorded, primarily from aerial photographs taken in the 75 years since 1945. Present day landscape images have been compared with the archival aerial photographs taken by Dr. Ben Robinson, Dr. Stephen Upex and Rog Palmer and held in the photographic collections of Peterborough Historic Environment Record (HER). A catalogue of all ridge and furrow locations within PUA has been recorded. These have been measured by area and assessed for condition, wherever possible a reason for any absence of the ridge and furrow landscape has been determined. These results will provide an input into and inform future planning and policy making decisions. Where the need for proposed future development at any particular site can be weighed against the public benefits offered by preserving the historic landscape. Writing in the journal Antiquity in 2000, Hall and Palmer stated: “Modern agriculture has removed ridges to such an extent that it has become desirable to preserve some of the increasingly rare good examples” (Hall, D. & Palmer, R., 2000. Ridge and furrow survival and preservation. Antiquity, 74(283), pp. 29-30). Twenty years later and this still holds true, especially for areas such as Peterborough where ridge and furrow landscapes are far from common. Of the 1006 hectares of ridge and furrow landscapes identified since 1945, an alarming amount (293 hectares) is now absent and entirely lost. A further amount (667 hectares) has been subject to various degrees of degradation, only a small amount (44 hectares) remains in a well preserved and recognisable condition. These last few remaining well preserved parcels should be considered for preservation as soon as possible. BA (Hons) Archaeology & Landscape History - MOD000798 Undergraduate Major Project iii SID1722284/1 Paul Hales May 2020 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. ii Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iii Plates, Tables and Figures .................................................................................................... v 1.0 Introduction....................................................................................................................1 2.0 Aims and objectives .....................................................................................................8 3.0 Methodology..................................................................................................................9 4.0 Data ............................................................................................................................. 20 5.0 Creating ridge and furrow ........................................................................................ 32 6.0 Case studies .............................................................................................................. 39 7.0 Discussion .................................................................................................................. 63 8.0 Conclusions and recommendations ....................................................................... 73 References ............................................................................................................................ 77 Bibliography........................................................................................................................... 79 Appendix 1............................................................................................................................. 80 Appendix 2............................................................................................................................. 81 Appendix 3............................................................................................................................. 97 BA (Hons) Archaeology & Landscape History - MOD000798 Undergraduate Major Project iv SID1722284/1 Paul Hales May 2020 Plates, Tables and Figures Plate Description Page 1 Glebe Farm, Stanground Cover 2 Ploughman and plough boy with team of oxen 36 3 Ox plough teams at work 37 4 Domesday Book entry for Stanground 39 5 & 6 Stanground South Aerial Photograph 1988 & 2005 45 7 Glebe Farm site - view southeast 46 8 Glebe Farm site - view east 47 9 Glebe Farm site - section 49 10 Top Lodge Farm, Upton 55 11 Domesday Book entry for Glinton 56 12 & 13 Alwalton Hill, Hampton 60 14 & 15 Alwalton Hill, Hampton 62 Tables Description Page 1 Administrative Chronology 4 2 Assessment criteria for ridge and furrow conditional grading 14 3 ArcGIS Attribute Object Data 15 4 PUA R&F Totals 21 5 R&F All Conditions: by parish or ward 22 6 R&F All Conditions: by total area (ha) 23 7 R&F Absent Condition: by parish with greatest area (ha) 24 8 R&F Absent Condition: by percentage of total parish R&F area 24 9 R&F Degraded Condition: by parish with greatest area (ha) 25 10 R&F Degraded Condition: by percentage of total parish R&F area 26 11 R&F Preserved Condition: by parish with greatest area (ha) 27 12 R&F Preserved Condition: by percentage of total parish R&F area 27 13 Arcane measures & metric equivalents 34 14 Parish Data: Fletton & Stanground 39 15 Glebe Farm, Stanground: change through time 44 16 Parish Data: Hampton & Orton Longueville 50 17 Parish Data: Upton 53 18 Parish Data: Glinton 56 19 Parish Data: Hampton 59 20 Glossary 75 21 Acronyms 76 BA (Hons) Archaeology & Landscape History - MOD000798 Undergraduate Major Project v SID1722284/1 Paul Hales May 2020 Figures Description Page 1 PUA Location 3 2 PUA Boundary 5 3 PUA Wards & rural civil parishes 6 4 Nassaburgh Hundred 7 5 PUA Earthworks & cropmarks 16 6 PUA SHINE polygons 17 7 PUA Ridge & Furrow polygons 18 8 PUA Boundary with LiDAR imagery 19 9 R&F Percentage of each condition 21 10 Land use analysis - loss, threat and potential threat 28 11 PUA Ridge & Furrow polygons & monument points 31 12 Schematic of two furlongs 32 13 Plough team using an ox goad 34 14 Gradual build-up of the ridge at the centre of a strip 35 15 Plough team - Advantages of turning left over turning right 37 16 Peterborough’s southern medieval villages 40 17 Peterborough’s southern suburban villages 41 18 Extract from the Stanground enclosure award - 1801 43 19 - 26 Glebe Farm, Stanground - change through time 44 27 Glebe Farm, Stanground R&F survey 45 28 Orton Longueville - 1901 52 29 Orton Longueville - 1952 52 30 Grange Farm, Orton Longueville - AP marks 52 31 Grange Farm, Orton Longueville - Assessed R&F 52 32 Top Lodge Farm, Upton 54 33 Top Lodge Farm, Upton - LiDAR 55 34 North Zone of PUA 58 35 R&F in Glinton village 58 36 Alwalton Hill - AP marks 61 37 Alwalton Hill - Assessed R&F 61 38 PUA Study zones 64 39 - 47 PUA Study zones and assessed R&F polygons 64 - 72 48 PUA All ArcGIS layers 80 BA (Hons) Archaeology & Landscape History - MOD000798 Undergraduate Major Project vi SID1722284/1 Paul Hales May 2020 1.0 Introduction 1.1 General introduction and project background Every day for 14 years the short walk to school took me past a field which contained some curious lumps and bumps, some ridges and furrows (plate 1). There is a perception the landscape around us is entirely natural, however, forests and woodlands have been managed and rivers persuaded into courses that most suits man. Today’s East Anglian Fens are not natural, farmland and fields are not natural. Some of the characteristics of the fields seen today are as a result of hundreds of years of toil by our ancestors. The ridge and furrow earthworks produced by medieval cultivation were once a familiar sight across many parts of England, these are now a rare archaeological resource (Anderton