Peak Experience

Limestone walls of the White Peak  Chelmorton's Medieval walls curve out from the village. More recent regular blocks are in the foreground 

 

You’ll see dry-stone field walls all over the Peak District.  Light grey limestone walls characterize the White Peak and South-West Peak.  Darker gritstone walls criss-cross the Dark Peak.

 

Look for narrow curving fields near villages and ruler-straight field blocks further out.

 

The curving walls tell a 1,000-year-old story of medieval village life.  The lord of the manor owned land and his villagers farmed it ‘in common’.  Households grew wheat, barley and oats on strips of land in a common field.  A single boundary wall around the whole common field protected the crops from livestock on common pastures beyond.  No walls divided up the strips.

 

Archaeologists think people began to build field walls in the 1300s.  Plagues of the Black Death, cattle disease and colder weather decimated villages and made it hard to grow crops.  Households started to claim land from the common field for themselves.  They built walls to enclose groups of neighbouring strips and protect their own livelihood.

 

Some landowners turned whole villages and common fields into sheep ranches.  Many medieval villages were deserted, and you can still find traces of some in the Peak District (see ‘Places to visit’ below).

 

Curving walls follow the original arable strips.  Ox teams with ploughs needed a wide turning circle, so the strips curve at either end where the oxen approached their turn.  There was an area of unploughed land right at the end of each group of strips where the plough was turned to go in the opposite direction.

 

In some place these strips survive as large groups of ridges and furrows.

 

Most of the White Peak was farmed from villages until the 1700s and 1800s, when the straight walls were built around larger fields further away from villages.

 

Landowners and farmers enclosed the common pastures on less-fertile land.  They used fertilizer and built drains to improve the land, so more nutritious grass could grow to feed bigger herds of cattle.  Farmers invested in raising cattle for beef and dairy, and cows became more common than sheep.

 

Many of the isolated White Peak farmhouses date from that time, built near to the new fields.  Many still survive as farms, whereas many of the older farms within villages are now converted into ordinary houses.

 

Look out for large stone or concrete circular dewponds in some fields.  These catch rainwater for cattle to drink.

 

 

You’ll see older curving walls around many villages and more recent straight walls set in great walking country across much of the White Peak and South West Peak.

 

Here are just a few of many places to see beautiful walls and historic villages.  The patterns of walls across the landscape make a great subject for photographs, especially when the light is low.

 

Taddington, Priestcliffe and Blackwell.  Ancient strip fields and more recent enclosure fields surround these villages.

 

Eyam, Litton and Monyash are just some villages surrounded by curving walls revealing ancient common fields.  The walled lane northeast of Litton runs between older curving fields and more recent square fields.

 

Chelmorton, Flagg, Taddington and Wardlow preserve their medieval origins with buildings strung out along a main road.

 

Wheston village is still mostly comprised of working farms.

 

Bradnop and Morridge in the Staffordshire Moorlands are good places to see square fields dating from the 1700s and 1800s.

 

Deserted medieval villages survive at Nether Haddon, opposite Haddon Hall, and Conksbury near Youlgrave.