WORKING GROUP 7 
BOWEN 
417 
Fig. 4a. 
a. Strip lynchets with small trees growing on the faces of the risers. 
b. A secondary negative lynchet cuts across the ends of a. Note the gap between this and 
the prominent riser above. Immediately to the right of b is a sharp modern negative 
lynchet and it seems that one strip lynchet was levelled before ploughing. 
c. Modern plough furrows. These end on the south against a modern headland with a 
positive lynchet about one foot high. 
d. Traces of ‘'Celtic” fields. The relatively short riser running left to right ends at a point 
where rounded scarps run at right angles to it. Where exposed in the pit at (d) the scarp 
consists of solid chalk, the “positive” element ploughed away. 
e. Is a block of narrow rig, each ridge 4 1 / 2 yards wide and 6 inches high. 
f. Access ramps, most of which seem to have been ploughed. 
g. The strip lynchets here narrow first to 7 ft and then to 4 ft and one continues at this width 
for 50 yards before ending in a point. It is difficult to imagine how a plough could have 
turned. 
h. No strip lynchets on this steep north facing slope, but two up and down scarps clearer on 
the air photograph than on the ground. Possibly divisions of the “Celtic” phase. 
j. A low bank and ditch cut by the negative lynchets on the valley floor. 
k. A field being harvested. Note the diagonal marks. 
given in writing. This treatment often applies to those dramatic representatives 
of strip cultivation, the medieval hillside strips we call strip lynchets, which 
might in places have treads, or arable surfaces, only a yard across. A large area 
cannot reasonably be presented at a scale bigger than about, 1 : 5,000 and if 
we are to put it all on one plan, as is desirable for a basic key illustration, strips 
of this width just cannot be drawn. Air photographs seem to be the only way 
of bringing accuracy of presentation to plans thereby of necessity only dia 
grammatic in the smaller details. Fig. 4 illustrates this. It is a splendid air photo 
graph of strip lynchets at Mere near the Wiltshire and Somerset border. The