Anyone who has played golf on the course at Sewerby Hall and Gardens can’t help but notice that the landscape on which the course sits is particularly unsuited to the game. Not only does it have a steep slope to the west, but it is covered with a series of longitudinal ridges.
Known as ridge and furrow these ridges are in fact a remnant of the mediaeval farming landscape. They were created by the peculiarities of the medieval plough which would push the spoil from the furrow up to the right. Unlike modern ploughs they was not reversible and so at the end of the field the plough would have to return down the adjacent furrow, again pushing spoil up to the right. Over years of ploughing the effect was to create these distinct ridges.
Pulled by oxen not horses the plough was difficult to manoeuvre. Oxen needed more space to turn than horses and ridge and furrow often developed a sinuous elongates S shape as the ploughmen began to turn the oxen before reaching the headland where the turn would be completed.
Farming in the middle ages was a communal affair. Almost every manor had a series of open fields around it. The villagers would each own or rent a number of ridge and furrow strips scattered within the fields.
But in the 1700s landowners began to investigate ways to improve the productivity of the land. The old way of farming was inefficient and it was hard to introduce new technologies. As a result across the country there was a programme of rationalisation as scattered land holdings were brought together and enclosed, replacing the large open fields with the patchworks of small fields we are familiar with today. Sewerby’s open fields were enclosed in 1811. 1, 624 acres of land was enclosed of which John Greame of Sewerby Hall received 843.
Sewerby’s enclosure brought communal farming and the open fields to an end. In the years that followed John Graeme and afterwards his son Yarburgh landscaped, emparked and walled the estate. But ironically this very action preserved this small area of ridge and furrow, fossilising it in the grassland of the north park, protecting it from modern agriculture and development and in the process giving us this precious reminder of medieval Sewerby.

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