1) The physical division between the cultivated lower areas and the unenclosed moorland in upland management.
In The Harvest of the Hills Angus Winchester wrote of ways in which the upland landscape of the north reflects centuries of land management. He described the physical division between the cultivated lower areas and the unenclosed moorland, sometimes still to be seen as a bank and ditch running across the hillside. This had a variety of names, including ‘acredyke’ in some regions and ‘head-dyke’ in others. In fact, townships at different altitudes had unenclosed areas of waste called moors and another word for such a boundary, in different parts of Yorkshire, was ‘moor dyke’. The term has been noted in Durham in 1579 but the Yorkshire evidence takes its history back to the thirteenth century, in an undated deed: n.d. ‘extended in length from Moredik on the north to Catdikes towards the south’, Kilnwick. Similarly, in 1315-6, a selion in Church Fenton lay ‘next le Muredike’ and in 1399-1400, two strips of arable land in Swaledale were said to lie between le Muredyke and the river. The bursars’ books of Fountains Abbey record a payment of 6s 8d in 1457-8 in factura sepium circa Mordyke apud Chapelhous and at a very low altitude Everthorpe in the East Riding had le Muredyke in 1521.