| Where: | Countrywide but especially in East Midlands & East Anglia |
| When: | Monday after 6th January |
| Time: | All day |
Plough Monday is the name given to the first Monday after January 6th, and it marked the resumption of agricultural work after the Christmas festivities. In some areas of England it was common for the farm labourers to tour the villages with their plough in a money-raising trip, perhaps with singing, mumming plays and dancing or even parading a Straw Bear; the participants commonly disguised themselves with costumes or by blacking their faces with soot, perhaps so that they could not be identified if they ploughed up the gardens of householders unwilling to make contributions. The areas in which the celebrations were most common were in the east midlands and East Anglia and it is in this area today that most of the revivals are carried out, often on a weekend in early to mid January (see Calendar Tables for more details). It was also common for church cermonies involving blessing the plough to take place either on Plough Monday or the Sunday immediately before and some of these have also been revived.
Helpful Hints
The Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival is a direct descendant of the Plough Monday customs, and there are revivals with a variety of names, often performed by local morris dancers. Look out for Plough Jags, Stots, Witchers and Bullockers (see separate listings under table of Variable Dates in January) and Old Glory (see Cutty Wren) also perform on Plough Monday. There are numerous other celebrations of Plough Monday – many of the Plough Play performances can be found at http://www.mastermummers.org
There are too many to list on here, but notable examples include Balsham, and Comberton in Cambridgeshire where they have their own day of dance including one unique to Comberton.
As well as performances of plays, many places have a Blessing the Plough service, often held on the Sunday just before Plough Monday (examples can be found at Durham and Exeter Cathedrals as well as parishes throughout the country).
Double-check date details of events linked to Plough Monday as some organisers stick strictly to the Monday following 6th January while others sometimes drift to a different week.
In 2025 Plough Monday falls on Monday January 13th.
Click here for more info : http://www.ploughmonday.co.uk/
Click here for Old Glory:http://www.old-glory.org.uk/index.html
Photo by Anguskirk.
I love customs and folklore from many different countries. I am an American, so we do not recognize this holiday. I first learned of it in a book called “Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs”. In this particular book, Plough Monday is discussed in the Pre-Lent section because of Twelfth Night kicking off pre-Lent. Thank you for this great website! I visited London for the first time in August of 2012 and loved it!!! I hope to get back for a visit some time soon.
P.S. I also became aware of “Pancake Day Races” through the book referenced above. I looked at your February holidays and was happy to see all of the links to this Shrove Tuesday tradition in England.
Hi Christine,
Thanks for getting in touch! I don’t think I’ve come across your “Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs” so I’ll have to keep an eye out for it (I work in the book trade so I might be able to track it down!) To be fair, I think many people living in the UK won’t have heard of Plough Monday unless they have an event nearby or have an interest in customs and tradition,and there are some areas of the country where it’s better known than others but everybody knows Pancake Day, right across the country and most of us make pancakes on the day. I’m pleased you enjoy the site – and when you’re back over here I expect you’ll be able to find some great events to visit whatever time of year you’re visiting,
Best wishes,
Averil
Hello Averil,
Thank you for the warm welcome! I will be coming back to your site a lot now that I have discovered it. As for the book I referenced, it was published back in the 1950’s. I saw it in a college Library where I used to work. I liked it so much that I searched it on Amazon or EBay and purchased a second-hand copy for myself a few years ago. It is long out of print. In researching the Pancake Day traditions, I learned that there is a town in Kansas in the U.S. that has an annual Pancake Day race. I think that they consider themselves a “sister city” to a town called Olney, which is in the UK. Have you heard of it? I live in Cleveland, Ohio, a large industrial city in the northeast part of the U.S., located roughly between Chicago and New York. Cleveland is a melting pot with large populations of Italian, Jewish, Irish, Eastern European, German, and African-American descent, plus other groups mixed in. As such, there are a lot of different religious, holiday, and food traditions here, which I love to explore. I hope to make a visit to the UK again soon.
Kind regards,
Christine
Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs is now selling for hundreds of dollars!
Hi Brian,
I think I did see that on one of the online sites! I’m so glad I purchased it (second-hand, of course) years ago. I’ve occasionally come across folkore/religious custom books at Library Book Sales in the U.S. (where the library sells books it no longer wants … there are lots of such sales here, usually run by organizations of the library called “Friends of the Library”. In fact, many Friends groups have tried to ban booksellers from the first day of the sale, which is restricted to dues-paying Friends members so they get first choice. Booksellers sometimes join all the local Friends groups, go to the first day of the book sales, snap up the great titles using little gadgets that read barcodes and tell them the selling price, then flip and sell the items. Some people here tried to challenge that, but lost. But on the topic of the book itself, there are also some similar books by the same author, and I bought those, too. Thank you for the info that it has become quite expensive. I think one is called Handbook of Easter Customs, plus I have one other, all written (I think) by the same author in the early 1950’s.
Comberton in Cambridgeshire is visited by morris dancers on Plough Monday every year, who perform molly dances including Comberton’s own unique one.
Thanks for the information Estelle- I’ll add a note to the post!
Best wishes,
Averil