THE countryside in the Yorkshire Dales National Park is full of pointers to bygone days when our ancestors worked the land to survive.

Some need an expert eye to trace them while others are more obvious – it’s just a matter of knowing what to look for.

Medieval fields may be seen as banks and ridges within the pastures and meadows.

Good examples of medieval field systems still survive around Reeth in Swaledale, Castle Bolton in Wensleydale and Kettlewell in Wharfedale – but there are many more.

Medieval villages operated a system of subsistence farming, with crops being grown in the strip fields on the lower valley slopes. Although animals were kept on the upper slopes, Dales farming was predominantly arable up to the 16th century. Then a transformation began and, gradually, pastoral farming began to dominate.

A very obvious example of the change was enclosure, where strip fields were grouped together and the animals were put on to the fields that formerly grew the corn. The golds and browns of the arable landscape disappeared in a sea of green – the beginning of the landscape that we see today.

Early enclosure happened on a piecemeal basis. Much of the Dales landscape was already enclosed by the time of the parliamentary enclosure Acts of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Probably because of inheritance traditions in the Dales, farm holdings became fragmented.

As individual farms could have fields scattered over a wide area, it was no longer practical to bring animals in for milking. A new system was established where the farmer went to the cows instead. This led to the introduction of a different type of building – the field barn.

These buildings were typically little more than a large fodder store with standings for a handful of cows across one end. In summer the animals lived out in the fields, going indoors only for shelter or to be milked. In winter, however, they lived in the barn, emerging only for a short exercise period at milking time.

By the middle of the 18th century, the field barn landscape was well established and was rare enough to arouse interest. In 1751 Richard Pococke who, as well as being a bishop was a renowned traveller, wrote: “There are houses built in most of the fields, which ... at a distance make the appearance of scatter’d villages.”

Although the field barn system was clearly well established by 1750, individual barns are rarely of great age.

Most date from the 19th century and had an active life of little more than 150 years.

But, while the individual buildings may not be particularly special, collectively their impact is immense.

In some parts of the national park – notably Swaledale, Wharfedale and Wensleydale – the pattern and density of these traditional farm buildings is truly unique.

They are iconic features of a working landscape of great beauty, which is maintained by a system of livestock farming that is still deeply interwoven into Dales’ life and culture.

● Don McLellan is Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s assistant building conservation officer.