Hedges and Hedgelaying

CHAPTER 1

The Evolution of the Hedge

THE ROMAN INVASION

We have to thank Julius Caesar for the first written reference to hedges. In his report on the battle for Gaul (northern Europe) in 57 BC he describes how the Nervii tribe, on the borders of Belgium and France, had constructed hedges by cutting and laying small trees and binding them with brambles and thorn to provide a stockproof barrier to keep their cattle safe from marauding local tribes and to thwart his cavalry. It is safe to assume that the Britons of the same era would also have developed similar barriers to contain their stock.

Julius Caesar also related that during his first exploratory 'invasion' of Britain in 55 BC his soldiers fed themselves by cutting corn grown by the Britons. In his second invasion he demanded corn from the local tribes to feed his troops. Tacitus, writing in 79 AD, recorded that the Britons had a flourishing trade with Gaul, selling them grain in exchange for other goods. The growing of corn in a lowland, wooded landscape would have required protection from the ravages of deer, wild boar and other animals; thus some form of protective enclosure would have been constructed either from light brush cut in the woods, or they could have dug up small thorn and other 'hedge' plants to form a living fence, built in conjunction with posts and dead brushwood to protect the young hedge until it matured. We know that the walled enclosure of small fields had been in use as far back as the Neolithic period, particularly in upland areas, where stone was cleared from the land intended for cultivation or for stock retention.

An artist's impression of a Bronze Age settlement on the banks of a stream. The thatched round houses were a common sight across Britain, situated either on high ground for protection from other marauding tribes or, in settled times, on lower, level terrain near to a water supply and where easily workable land was to hand for growing crops and grazing cattle. The areas cleared in the native woodland for their primitive arable strip cultivations and the wattle enclosures for their livestock were the early beginnings of our field and hedgerow heritage.

The Romans brought to Britain all the trappings of their advanced civilization. They constructed an excellent network of roads to link their garrison towns and other communities, taking over land to build their villas and establish thriving farmsteads across lowland Britain. All this industry would not have been lost on the local tribal groups who embraced the Roman way of life and began to expand their own cropping, clearing more woodland and scrub on the drier, easy-working soils above the flood plains. The raising of cattle had been central to their way of life, but increasingly the cultivation of land gained in its importance to their economy.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS

At the beginning of the third century the Roman occupation came to an end as the Empire began to experience problems at home. Legions were withdrawn, leaving the Romano-British population to defend themselves from the increasing Saxon incursions across the North Sea. A period of increasingly unsettled times followed until the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The Saxon invaders soon began to settle the lands they originally came to conquer, to become known as the Anglo-Saxons. They continued the practice of clearance and cultivation of land across lowland Britain developing the village community as we know it today. Hedges feature in many of the Saxon land charters, and many of their field boundaries exist to this day in those parts of England not subjected to the wholesale hedge removal of the post World War II era.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST

William the Conqueror arrived in 1066, but it took him nearly twenty years to fully subjugate the Saxon population and deal with his own squabbling Norman barons. In 1086 he instigated a full survey and inventory of the whole of England to be compiled into the Doomsday Book, which remains a unique record of the way the country was governed and ordered, in addition to providing William with a census of the population as a basis to tax and control the kingdom.

The king took over the ownership of all land, redistributing it amongst his faithful barons and knights in recognition of their services to him. In addition large areas of mixed woodland were enclosed to form royal hunting forests, further depriving the rural population of their ability to grow their own crops. The feudal system was established, whereby the new baronial land-owning class became responsible to the king for the management of the lands vested in them, either employing men to work for them or sub-letting to tenant farmers. A period of stability ensued with the continuation of a rural economy.

Throughout the Saxon period a patchwork landscape continued to evolve as woodland and scrub were slowly cleared to make way for further arable cultivation. Much of this land was in the proximity of each village, where it formed large open fields, cultivated under a two- or three-field strip system. Each villager held long, narrow strips of land in each of the fields, ostensibly to divide the good and poorer soils up fairly between all the strip holders and to ensure an agreed rotation of crops each year in each field. Other land was held by tenant farmers, which they were able to enclose and farm as they wished.

THE BLACK DEATH

The relative peace of the eleventh to fourteenth centuries was marred by the Black Death in 1349, which claimed nearly half the population and led to a severe depression. With so few people left to cultivate the land, arable cropping diminished; hedges, fences and woodland fell into decay, which would continue until the next era of great change in Tudor times.

These centuries were also marked by wars, both at home and abroad. The Hundred Years war with France (1337-1453) required many men from the shires to fight for the king, further depleting the rural population. This was followed, in 1455, by the Wars of the Roses, a civil war between those of Lancastrian and Yorkist persuasion.

THE TUDOR REFORMATION

Henry VIII will always be remembered for his 'battles' with the Pope in Rome, who refused to grant him a divorce from his first wife; this forced him to declare himself to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The refusal of church leaders to agree to his demands led to the suppression of the monasteries. The king took control of all the church's extensive lands and property, redistributing them to his favourite courtiers. These courtiers had little respect for the church's tenant farmers, whom they in turn dispossessed of their land. They enclosed more land to provide secure pastures for the grazing of extra sheep. The price of wool had been high and stable for many years and continued to be so. These new 'wool barons' demonstrated their new-found wealth by building fine houses and renovating churches, notably in the Cotswolds.

In 1549 Robert Kett, a Norfolk farmer, led the last attempt by tenants and labourers to contain the power of the lords of the manors, who continued to enclose land wherever they could find some small justification, so dispossessing the cottagers from their strips and thereby adding to their hardship. Farming for the wealthy continued to prosper at the expense of the poor until the Civil War in 1642.

In the early sixteenth century the first agricultural writers of merit began to record their observations and make recommendations for the improvement of farming practices. Fitzherbert's Booke of Husbandry was published in 1523. He was a keen advocate of hedge enclosures:

.it is much better to have several closes and pastures to put his cattle in, which should be quick-setted (hawthorns planted), ditched, and hedged, so as to divide those of different ages as this was more profitable than to have his cattle go before the herdsman (in the common field).

He was followed by Thomas Tusser, whose writings became the handbook for the country gentleman farmer for the next two hundred years.

THOMAS TUSSER

In 1557 there appeared A Hundred Good Pointes of Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser, who went on to expand this celebrated book into Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie before his death in 1580. The books are written in rhyming verse and yet contain many wise observations on the best farming practices of the period. The book's continued popularity was ensured by William Mavor's updating of the original rhyming text in 1812. Mavor was a distinguished agricultural writer who realized the lasting value of Tusser's great work, and added extensive footnotes throughout in order to update the original text.

Harpsden village, near Henley-on-Thames, 1586. This coloured tithe map drawn on vellum by Mathesis Benevolum is held in the Oxfordshire Archives. The colours and detailed representation of this rural landscape show us the diversity of hedgerows and woodland strips that bordered the small arable and grass fields. The detail and shading have all the qualities of a good aerial photograph. Visiting the parish today reveals that some hedges have been removed to form larger fields, but the area retains its narrow, hedged lanes and wooded slopes. (Oxfordshire County Records Office)

Tusser informs us that he was a keen advocate of enclosure, as opposed to open fields (formerly called 'Champion Country'), and his observations on the care and cultivation of hedges are as valid today as when he wrote them nearly 450 years ago!

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