Once a major event in East Anglian towns and villages, the tradition involved ploughs being blessed and drawn through the streets, accompanied by singing, dancing and drinking. on the first Sunday or Monday after the Christian festival of Epiphany.
 
The practice fell in and out of fashion over the years, but in recent times there has been a revival of the rural tradition.
 
On Sunday 7 January a procession of horses, tractors and more than 50 villagers walked from Sygate to Cawston, singing carols as they walked though the village.
 
In medieval times, Cawston had a Plough Guild which met at the Plough Inn in Sygate.
 
On Plough Sunday or Monday, the guild would process the plough from Sygate into the village with great ceremony and festivity, raising money for the guild and highlighting the importance of agriculture to the village community.
 
The guild would also light candles and say prayers for a fruitful harvest in the year to come.
 
Team Vicar, Rev. Andrew Whitehead, said: “It’s been a real joy to revive the tradition of Plough Sunday in Cawston.
 
“It gives us a chance to remember and thank all of those people who work in the fields around us to provide our food, and it allows us to pray for them as they go about their important work.”
 
The church of St Agnes in Cawston is one of many in Norfolk to house a horse-drawn plough − a reminder of how farmers used to work the land – and contains other artefacts, including the pub sign from the Plough Inn, which closed in the 1960s, and a gallery dedicated to the Plough Guild.
 
Plough Sunday coincides with the church’s celebration of Epiphany − the time in the Nativity story when the wise men visited the infant Jesus.
 
Last weekend’s celebrations in Cawston blended the two traditions, with the wise men catching a lift in the cabs of the tractors. They were safely delivered to the church and installed in the Nativity scene.