Plough Monday

What it is

Plough Monday opened the working year on the land in England. It came on the Monday after Twelfth Night, so it sat in early January, once the Christmas season had closed. For farming households this was the moment to return to the fields and begin ploughing. The day carried two sides: a church blessing on the men and their work, and, later, a rowdy round of visiting, music and money collecting. It was never one fixed custom. Different counties gave it different names, different costumes and different ways of asking for coins at the door.

Origins and the church

In England the start of the ploughing season was marked long before the day had a settled name. A plough race at Carlton in Lindrick in Nottinghamshire is recorded in the late 1200s, and by the 1400s such customs had gathered on one Monday. A Cambridgeshire document dated 1529 holds the earliest known use of the name Plough Monday. Parishes burned plough lights, candles lit for the farmworkers, through Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and East Anglia. An injunction against unnecessary candles in churches stopped the practice in 1538. It returned briefly under Mary I. By the end of Elizabeth I's reign the religious observance had ceased.

Plough gangs and plays

Once the church side was gone, the private side grew. Groups dragged a plough from door to door and asked for money. They went by many local names, among them Plough Boys, Bullocks, Lads, Jacks, Stots and Witches, and they wore costumes, sometimes with a man or boy in women's clothing. Musicians came along, plus a figure called the Bessy, an old woman or a boy playing one, and a fool. The plough itself had pet names too: fond, fool, stot and white. In Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland the gang performed a mummers' play, the Plough Play.

Decline and revival

Plough Monday customs thinned during the 1800s. Machines took over farm work, so there were fewer labourers and they were paid better, and begging in winter lost its point. The noise and menace of some plough gangs also drew complaints, and the authorities pressed them to stop or calm down. A few customs lasted into the 1930s but none continued past the start of the Second World War. After the war, the Church of England and the Royal Agricultural Society of England tried to build up Plough Sunday as a Christian feast, and had little success. From the 1960s the second British folk revival brought the day back, with a plough procession at Balsham in 1972 and molly dancing at Cambridge in 1977.

Straw bears and swords

Two revivals are well known. In Cambridgeshire, men and boys at Ramsey and Whittlesey once wrapped themselves in straw on Plough Monday or the day after and went dancing door to door as straw bears. That stopped around the First World War and returned at Whittlesey in 1980, helped by an Ashley Hutchings album that reprinted G. C. Moore Smith's 1909 account. The Straw Bear Festival now falls on the Saturday nearest Plough Monday. At Goathland in North Yorkshire, a plough procession, mummers' play and longsword dance were once performed. The dance disappeared around 1868 and came back for Plough Monday in 1923.

How Plough Monday is kept

A farming family began the day at church, where a plough light burned for the workers. Later a gang hauled a plough through the village. They stopped at houses, performed or sang, and collected coins. A Bessy and a fool went with them, and musicians played. In some counties the gang staged a Plough Play. Money raised at first went to the parish; in later centuries it paid for food and drink at a finish-up feast. Sword dancers at Goathland performed on the Saturday after, and their takings now go to a hospital and a lifeboat station.

When and where

The day falls on the Monday that follows Twelfth Night, which places it in the first half of January. In the past it also opened the ploughing season in England. Its date moves each year with the church calendar, and the Straw Bear Festival at Whittlesey is held on the Saturday closest to it.

Plough Monday belongs to England. It is strongest in the east, in East Anglia and the eastern counties, and it also has a long record in Yorkshire and the north east. Customs have been noted in Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Cornwall as well. Towns that keep or have kept it include Whittlesey, Ramsey and Balsham in Cambridgeshire and Goathland in North Yorkshire.

What Plough Monday means

For country people the day stood for the return to work after Christmas and for the hope of a good year's crops. The church's plough lights asked a blessing on those who worked the land. When the church side faded, the plough itself carried the meaning: a tool of daily labour hauled through the streets, shown at every door, and used to ask neighbours for help through the hard winter months. For today's dancers and singers it marks a place in the year and a link to the villages that kept it.

Days Plough Monday is marked

Questions people ask about Plough Monday

See also

Advent wreathAn evergreen ring of candles lit week by week in the lead-up to ChristmasMay DayA traditional European festival welcoming summer with greenery, dances and bonfiresYule logA log kept burning on the hearth through the twelve days of Christmas, for luckBeltaneA Gaelic first-of-summer festival of bonfires, May flowers and feasting on 1 May

Good reading and sources

• Balsham to mark 50 years since Plough Monday revivalBBC, Article
• Balsham to mark 50 years since Plough Monday revivalBBC, Article

• Plough Monday on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.