Introduction

With christmas behind us, we're looking at the origins of some of our other winter traditions. We'll have more on those shortly, but first let's introduce our guest, english heritage trustee and professor of history Ronald hutton. So what is plough m Monday? And also, when is it? When is it? It's the first monday after the sixth of january, which is the end of the 12 days of christmas. This was the time at which the ploughing season began in mediaeval and early modern britain. The whole village would own a plough kept in the church, and then loan it out to different farms through the Ploughing