What is a meadow?

A meadow is an area of grassland which is left to grow long through the spring and summer months. In late summer, the grass is cut for hay to feed animals in the winter, and the area is then grazed until the ground becomes too wet. This makes it different from pasture which is grazed all year round.

Meadows can look very different, depending on what is growing in them, but the key feature is that the vegetation is left during the growing and flowering season, and then cut. This system provides an ideal habitat for many wildflowers as it gives them time to flower and set seed before the grass is removed.

Meadow Evidence 1000 years ago

Roman texts and surviving features in Roman sculptures show haymaking was part of Roman agriculture. Long Roman scythes have been found in Britain, which may have been used for hay or cereal crops.

Meadows were widespread in the Anglo-Saxon farming landscape. Charters give us descriptions of land, distinguishing between pasture and meadow as different forms of grass management.

After the Norman Conquest (1066), meadows were a distinct and valuable category of land in the Domesday survey of 1086, although the records were inconsistent across the country. The size of a meadow was recorded in either acres or ‘ploughs’ – a measure calculated by the amount of land which could be ploughed with a team of eight oxen. Near Maiden Castle in Dorset, the Domesday entry for Winterborne recorded 80 acres of meadow, showing how prevalent this type of landscape was in the area over 900 years ago.

Water Meadows

Water meadows were first developed by medieval farmers, and the practice continued until the late Victorian period. Water meadows are a form of irrigation which encouraged greater hay crops and richer grazing land once the hay was cut. Channels were cut in grassland next to rivers or streams so that water could be diverted to flow across the grass depositing rich silt onto the meadow. The channels were designed so that they could be blocked or opened to control the flow. These complex systems took many different forms, often with regional variation.

Water meadows were an important part of agriculture until the recession of the late 19th century. Where they have not been ploughed up, water meadows leave strong earthwork remains in the landscape. They can be seen along the River Nare at Castle Acre in Norfolk, where they were used until the First World War.

19th-century agriculture

Meadows continued to be a valuable agricultural resource in the 19th century, although different forms of livestock feed such as root crops and oil cake were becoming more widespread. The 1836 Tithe Commutation Act allowed the payment of tithes – one tenth of annual produce to be paid to the church, a practice predating the Normans – to be paid in cash. This required a national survey to establish land ownership, on a scale unlike any since the Domesday Book.

The records from the 1830s and 1840s often noted where land was meadow. They show us Houghton House, Bedfordshire, was surrounded by meadow in 1843, and that there was ‘Meadow in [the] castle’ at Berkhamsted Castle, Hertfordshire, in 1839.

There was also a meadow inside Tilbury Fort, Essex, in the 19th century which supplied ‘a crop of hay in the summer’ for the horses at the barracks. An article from 1854 described:

The agreeable vision of a haymaking party – “The mower whets his scythe;” said mower being an artilleryman in his uniform, all but his coat: and the first sound we hear is the crisp, cutting hiss of his rural blade as it shears sharply through the heavy swathe of grass…