The Roots of the Common Fields: Linking Prehistoric and Medieval Field Systems in West Cambridgeshire

Abstract

In the Bourn Valley, west Cambridgeshire (Figure 1), the fragmentary parts of a pre-existing, possibly prehistoric, regular field layout appear to have been fossilised within the common field furlongs and selions of its medieval landscape, some of which have survived as earthworks into the modern period. This article discusses the evidence for this conclusion. If it has been interpreted correctly, it has a particular importance: it comes from an area which lay well within the planned 'champion' countryside of the Central Province, rather than the zones of 'ancient' countryside in the other two Provinces where so much evidence for co-axial and linear field layouts occurs (Roberts and Wrathmell, 2000). Here, fragments of some apparently prehistoric field boundaries continued to be used until Parliamentary enclosure. This is in direct contradiction to much other work which has demonstrated that the introduction of medieval common field agriculture erased the physical boundaries of pre-medieval field arrangements which survive in other areas only as marks on aerial photographs.

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