This one is called Raddle Turn and it seems it, and others, were sunk into the ground between fields to reduce the gradient of the hills for draught animals (maybe they just got worn away) and to give some protection against inclement weather for those travelling to and from the fields. They were also useful for penning sheep (the leaflet says). The first pic is looking up Raddle Turn (raddle has something to do with rams the leaflet says !) the second looking down and you can see how the banks and hedges dwarf Lynne.

Then it was on to Mill Field one of the "open fields". This system seems to have evolved during Saxon times but reached its height when things finally settled down after the Norman conquest and there were 200 years of relative stability in England prior to the Black Death in the mid 1300s. Basically the population was growing so more land was needed for food. As clearing the forest and scrub around villages needed the co-operation of locals and as they usually had "common" rights to this land anyway it was logical that these "new lands" were shared among them. Over time as more land was cleared farmers ended up with scattered strips around the village. Then as sons inherited parts of their fathers' holdings the strips were broken down further. These sons could then have taken strips of further newly cleared land. Later still one of these sons could have married a brotherless wife who inherited land so the strips were broken up into not a patchwork of fields but a jigsaw of strips. Eventually Enclosure Acts (another story) saw the end of open field farming but not at Laxton for reasons too complicated to go into on a holiday snaps page.
If you didn't want the history lesson you should have just looked at the pics. There's a bit more to come.

" ......................... in 1635 Laxton had 1,894 acres in the open fields divided into 2,280 strips, today there are just 483 acres left, divided into 164 strips ..............." This happened because land was enclosed but also because there are fewer farmers (it's general not just here) of the strips, 14 full time and 4 part timers, and consolidation to allow the use of modern machinery. Unfortunately we were too late to see the strips properly as the harvest had already been made but there are still remnants of the system.

I haven't worked out the difference between "sykes" and "roads" but this shows access to the the open field from the raod / syke. You can just about see the drainage ditch either side of the grassy bit and that the harvested crop straight ahead is different too the stubble either side.

This is obviously access to the field but does it constitute a syke ?

What it does show is that, perhaps only marginal, the system does take more land out of production than would be the case in "normal" farming. We were walking on what would usually be a farm track where there'd be only one way into the field instead of the several here going all the way across.
The old sykes as well as giving access to the various strips offered grazing to tethered animals, couldn't let them get at the peas and beans etc, and hay for winter feed.

This is definitely a syke (says so in the leaflet) where the grass has been cut for hay with corn stubble on the right.

The sykes, as well as giving access to the various strips, were left as areas to which the fields could drain.
Looks like a "headland" where the ox teams used for ploughing were turned but never having seen an ox team ploughing what would I know ?

This is the best shot I took of the (maybe) strips.

All I can go on is that there are round bales on either side of this bare strip so something different might have been grown here.

The Langsyke

or Long Syke.
Wider than the other sykes we saw but now narrows up by the trees and then becomes little more than a sunken path.
Strangely corrugated all the way from the trees.
Can only think that it was water action, left to right, but each ridge was just less than a stride, two ridges too long.

Then it was back to the village but no photos coz, though quite pretty, there was nothing distinctive to catch the eye. Funnily it seems most of the farm buildings were renewed around the 1760s which was the same sort of time many of the farms around Gt Harwood were built.

The Pinfold.
History lesson almost over.
This was the local animal pound, where strays were kept until claimed by their owners.
In past times it was a little more serious than the odd stray dog, I don't think they'd be kept here anyway, this was for things that ate crops.

Shaun making a break for freedom.

This is a bit of a play area for visiting school children, with an information board, so we didn't really look at it. The leaflet says the original Pinfold was across the road but we couldn't see it which wasn't surprising coz, after reading the book we bought, it was across the road but at least 20 yards to the north and, I now realise, I'd been looking at it for quite some time as we chatted to one of the older members of the community.