Plough Monday, the first Monday after the Epiphany, on 6 January, is the traditional start of the English agricultural year. In medieval and early modern England the ploughing season began immediately after the Christmas holidays, and lasted until March.^[1][2]

Customs associated with the beginning of the ploughing season are known from the medieval period; a plough race on 7 January was held at Carlton in Lindrick in Nottinghamshire in the late 13th century. But by the mid-15th century these celebrations were generally observed on Plough Monday.^[2] The earliest known source to name the day Plough Monday comes from Cambridgeshire in 1529.^[3]

The commonest early references to the customs of Plough Monday refer to “plough lights”, candles that were kept burning in local churches to bless the efforts of local farmworkers.^[4] Only the more affluent villagers could afford a plough, and so behind the plough light there might be a communal plough.^[2]

By the early 15th century ploughs were being paraded around some parishes on Plough Monday to raise money for the church, a practice that seems to have died out after the Reformation, along with the ban on plough lights.^[4] But although religious Plough Monday celebrations were suppressed, private observances continued, most commonly collecting money while dragging a plough around the parish.^[5]

Modern observances

Plough Monday customs declined during the 19th century. The advent of mechanised farming meant that agricultural workers were less numerous and relatively better paid, and thus did not have to beg for money in the winter.^[6] Additionally, the rowdy and threatening behaviour of those involved in the celebrations was becoming increasingly controversial, and there was pressure from the authorities to stop, or moderate their excesses;^[7] householders unwilling to donate faced the threat of their gardens being ploughed up by workers disguised in costumes and blackened faces, to prevent identification.^[8] Although some Plough Monday customs continued into the 1930s, they ended with the beginning of the Second World War.^[6]

Plough Monday customs began to be revived during the second British folk revival of the 1960s,^[9] and in 1972 the tradition of traveling around the village with a plough to collect money was revived at Balsham in Cambridgeshire.^[8]