Wool on the wire near Stormontfield

Image: © Maigheach-gheal Taken: 4 Apr 2010

The wool on the barbed wire, shows the use of the field before it was ploughed. In 1874 Joseph F Glidden, a sixty year old farmer from Illinois, invented and patented barbed wire. It has also been called the Devil's Rope or the Devil's Hatband. Here the sheep's wood has been caught on the wire. The earliest form of cultivation consisted simply of scratching the soil with a branch or antler to enable a seed to be buried. Early ploughs did no more than this. Later models were designed to bury the remains of the previous crop and surface debris. The Romans designed a plough with stout iron teeth mounted on a wooden sole which turned the soil. Celts and Romans, using light ploughs, adopted the practice of cross-ploughing, so that their fields tended to be almost square. The Saxons, using a heavy, eight-oxen plough, made their fields long to reduce the number of turns. The old English furlong, one-eighth of a mile, is derived from ‘furrow long’. The earliest mould-board plough, similar to that used today, dates from Saxon times. But the really modern mould-board dates from the 18th century with the introduction of iron. Double-furrow ploughs, pulled by two horses, were common until tractors were introduced. Today, powerful tractors pull banks of ploughs which cut many furrows at the same time.

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