What is a water meadow?

What a water meadow is

There are two main types: catchworks, used on sloping ground, carried water along channels on the contour that overflowed down the slope, while bedworks, or floated meadows, on level valley floors used a main carrier from the river to feed channels along the tops of ridges, with drains between the ridges returning the water to the river. Field names suggest that catchworks were in use in England in the medieval period, while bedworks appear fully developed in the 17th century, and a reference of 1605 at Affpuddle in Dorset is the earliest good evidence for them. Bedworks spread from the chalk rivers of Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire to neighbouring counties in the 17th and 18th centuries, and most water meadows went out of use in the 20th century. The flow of water was controlled with hatches (sluice gates) by a skilled worker called a drowner or waterman.

How water meadows look on LiDAR

Bedworks show on valley floors as panels of regular, closely spaced parallel ridges, with a channel along each crest and a drain in each furrow, fed from a main carrier and arranged in blocks at different angles. Catchworks show on valley sides as a series of channels running along the contour. A local relief model is the best view because the ridges are usually only 10 to 50 centimetres high, and sky-view factor shows the carriers and drains.

See LiDAR visualisations explained for what each method shows.

What can look like one

Ridge and furrow, modern field drainage and drained former marsh can look like water meadows. Water meadows lie on the valley floor next to a river, and their ridges carry a channel along the top and connect to carriers and hatches, which ridge and furrow does not.

Protection

Few water meadows are scheduled monuments, and most survive without statutory protection.