MSO6929 - Post-medieval water meadow at Horsen Farm (Monument)

A post-medieval water meadow system, known locally as a catchwater meadow, is visible on aerial photographs as a series of earthworks across fields southeast of Horsen Farm on Exmoor. Centred at approximately SS 7862 3671, several gutters are visible stretching across a steep southwest facing slope above an unnamed stream. The gutters extend across five fields, covering an area of some 12 hectares. This system appears to be connected to the farmyard at Horsen, suggesting that this was an integrated system which also distributed liquid manure as fertiliser to the fields. Most of the Exmoor "improvement farms" constructed in the mid 19th Century have some form of water meadow system; the land agent employed by the family, Robert Smith, was considered an expert in water meadows, and constructed a great number of them within the former Royal Forest. Catchwater meadows used a series of approximately parallel gutters to distribute flowing water evenly over the surface of the meadow in order to prevent freezing in winter and encourage early growth in spring, thereby providing extra feed for livestock. Most catchwater meadows are believed to date to the post-medieval period, although it is possible that they were first developed in the medieval period. [1-5] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [6]