© Wendy North. Creative Commons License http://www.geograph.org.uk/reuse.php?id=890154

This zone is made up of ancient woodlands and ancient irregular enclosure patterns. The key characteristics of these enclosures are small, sinuous or rounded fields, with mainly hedged boundaries. Very little of the land was formerly part of a medieval open field system. Fields were often assarted from a wooded landscape at an early date, many fields dating to the medieval period. The zone mostly lies across the lower and middle coal measures in Sheffield and Barnsley and the northern edge of the Rotherham district. Alternating bands of shales, sandstone and coal seams have weathered to produce a rolling hilly landscape with steeper scarps in the west of the zone and where the River Don cuts through the area. Areas of woodland have often survived on the steeper slopes.