Forever Autumn

Take care.

The Garbage And The Flowers

A morning ramble brought this unexpected series of pictures......

          ......an old Morris van in someone's driveway....

                                                    .......foxgloves by the garden fence.....

                                .....ox-eye daisies on the roadside....

                                                                       .....a discarded Guinness can.....

                        .....overgrown hedgerow.....

                                                                           ......a little rose peeping through....

                                              ........cigarette packet....silver and gold.....

                                                          .....the sunlight shining through the green.....

                            ......the mural in the underpass.....

                                                                            ......what say you, Mr Rabbit?

Take care.

Hedgerow History

The English landscape with its patchwork of fields divided by green hedges is so deep-rooted in our consciousness that it's tempting to think that it's always been like this. How could farming have taken place any other way?

But only 200 years ago the pattern over large parts of the country was much different. Around the village were small fields with hedges to keep stock near to the farm. But beyond that lay large "open-fields" with no hedgerows. The land was divided up into strips and each farmer would cultivate a number of strips scattered around the open-field. As you can imagine this was an inefficient way to farm the land and with the advent of even the earliest machinery became nigh on impossible. So the land was re-parcelled into fields with hedgerows and farms moved out from the villages to where their allocation of land happened to be.

This re-allocation of land required an act of parliament for each village. These were known as The Enclosure Acts and gave rise to many of the hedges which we have today (and many more which have disappeared since). Some land was never enclosed and moved from the old open fields to large modern fields without hedges ever being planted. Such a landscape, around the village of Bygrave, is shown above.

But old hedges do exist, very old hedges in some cases. Of course it's not the same bushes and trees that formed the original hedge. Or is it? Some hedgerow plants spread by sending up suckers from their roots, so genetically at least it's the same bush or tree. If these "new" plants spring up in the field they'll be removed by ploughing but if they come up in the hedge-line they'll still be there.

Here's a piece of modern mysticism, by which I mean something which has been discovered by man, is held to be generally true, but nobody can explain exactly why it works. By studying lots of hedges whose date was known from old maps and documents Max Hooper established that old hedges contained more species of hedgerow plants than new ones. Further investigations revealed that if you count the number of tree and shrub species in a 30 yard stretch of hedge then that number is equal to the age of the hedge in centuries. This apparently works over large parts of the country regardless of climate, soil-type or the whims of the original planter of the hedge.

When you stop to think about it it's hardly surprising that hedges of perhaps 1,000 years old are still in existence. After all until recently there was no pressure on the land and no big machinery that could only operate in large fields. Furthermore hedges were a valuable resource: they supplied firewood, wild berries, hops, fruit, timber and so on, as well as marking boundaries and keeping the stock in. Anyone destroying a hedge would upset a lot of his neighbours.

Of course maintaining hedges meant a lot of work and unsurprisingly if you want to see a well-maintained hedge in this day and age you'll have to know where to look. How about the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge?........

....or else on an estate managed by the National Trust ....

Hedge-laying, or "plashing" as it's sometimes called, is extremely labour-intensive and even in its heyday could only be completed on a rotation. This was wonderful for the wildlife as you get more berries and fruit when the hedge is left for a few years in between each tidy-up. And remember much of the wildlife was also a resource in those days. Nowadays with mechanical flails the hedge can quickly be transformed into this....

Not very pretty is it? But despair ye not, a lot of new hedge planting is also taking place in an attempt to replace some of what's been lost. And where this is happening the wildlife is making a return too.

Take care.

All Along The Hedgerow

The popular image of the English countryside is a land of small fields, thick hedges and majestic oaks. It still exists in some parts of the country but scenery changes according to the agricultural practices of the day, landscapes are lost and new landscapes evolve. But sometimes, in the words of Joni Mitchell, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone".

A few months back I posted a picture of a piece of hedge laying and Jack, of "Hartford Daily Photo" fame, suggested that I might do a post about English hedges. Actually, Jack, whole books have been written on the subject but this post will have to do for now. Others may follow later in the year.

The main purpose of a hedge these days is to keep animals within a confined grazing area. Wooden fences and stone walls are also used but both are more expensive to build and maintain. In the more mountainous and rocky parts of the country stone walls are common but around here hedges of hawthorn and other trees and bushes are the norm.

A hawthorn hedge can quickly be established, in fact hawthorn is also known as quick-thorn. But the problem with any kind of hedge is that the constituent plants have no ambition to make a nice hedge. They don't want to grow cheek-by-jowl with their neighbour, intertwine their branches just above ground level, stay at a manageable height and just grow laterally. They want to spread their branches in all directions, cut out the light from their neighbours, grow up towards the sun and be trees!

If you want a hedge to remain as a hedge then you've got to do something about it; and that something is "laying" your hedge. Put simply this involves cutting part way through the wood near to ground level, bending each stem over at an angle and weaving them in and out of the remaining uprights. Sounds easy enough till you try! The result is a stock proof barrier.

Here in East Anglia farming became more and more arable with very few animals being kept. Why bother with hedges? Waste of space. Knock 'em down. Set fire to them. Have bigger and bigger fields for bigger and bigger machines. Forget Little Stargoose, Parson's Mead and The Backland. Lets plough and sow the Hundred-Acre. One species loved it - the hare. They adapted to the wide open spaces and yesterday were in full Mad-March-Hare mode, chasing one another and engaging in occasional bouts of boxing. But all so distant that my little camera had to be pushed to the limit to get anything at all.

But things are changing. Slowly we're realising what has been lost and hedges are being reinstated. Catkins are blowing in the breeze and buds are forming.

Join me again soon for another ramble - all along the hedgerow.

Take care.

Too Good To Pass By

A few more bits and bobs that I saw during bike rides and walks earlier in the year.

A well-laid hedge

Before the invention of barbed wire men toiled for endless hours during the winter months making hedges like the one above. The individual bushes of the hedge are cut almost through with a bill-hook and the branches are woven in and out to construct a stock-proof barrier. The hedge would continue to live and grow and also provided shelter for the animals during severe weather. For those of you who like to collect unusual and largely forgotten words, the strong leather gauntlets which were worn for the job were called "dannocks". My father spent many freezing hours at this thankless task.

How high?

If you're in the habit of inspecting old walls and stones you might have come across one of these mysterious marks. It's an Ordnance Survey bench-mark, an accurate measurement of the height above sea level of a particular point, all part of the minutely detailed and accurate work of mapping this country. If you're really interested in how the land was mapped then "Map Of A Nation" by Rebecca Hewitt should be on your reading list. It's a fascinating tale of the historical necessities which led to the map's creation and the obsessive madmen who undertook the mission. A glance at an old map tells me that the point above is precisely 59 feet above sea level. 

Have a "butcher's"!

The past use of this shop in St Ives is obvious for all to see, preserved in this lovely tiling. Well done, architects, for saving this shop front. Readers from outside Britain may not know that "having a butcher's" means "having a look". It's an example of Cockney rhyming slang - from "butcher's hook" = "look". 

The village pound

Most villages would have had one of these, a pound, where stray farm animals were penned in (impounded) till the owners came to collect them, usually after paying a small fee. This one is in Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire.

A model villager (or a village modeller).

These cheerful bits of craftsmanship were spotted in the village of Linton, brightening up, as well as individualising, an otherwise unremarkable house in a back street.

There was a church on top of the garage roof too!

Take care.