The stitching that holds the fabric of the countryside together
“The stitching that holds the fabric of the countryside together.”
In 2000, author Bill Bryson related how an outraged supporter of the Campaign for Rural England had characterised the destruction of our hedgerows: “No one would think of tearing down a quarter of England’s medieval churches. But that’s precisely what we have done with our hedgerows.” Bryson, who went on to become Chair of the CPRE, continued, “For well over a thousand years, they have been a defining attribute of rural England, the stitching that holds the fabric of the countryside together.”
It’s easy to see why hedgerows evoke such lyricism as the early spring flowers of blackthorn illuminate the bare branches, followed by hawthorn’s ‘May Blossom’ (also often out in April). But don’t bring either indoors, as country lore has it, they bring ill-luck, even death (aspersions cast on them for once being sacred to pagan deities)!
However, hedgerows exist not for their beauty or religious significance, but their utility. Leading authority on our countryside, Oliver Rackham, cites archaeological evidence of our ancestors adapting natural vegetation to protect their crops and livestock in the Bronze Age. Rackham quotes descriptions of the use and value of hedges from Roman texts dating back to the first century BC. And later, Julius Caesar noted with approval the use of thorn ‘hedges’ by the Northern European tribes as defences as much against enemy raiders as wild animals. Anglo-Saxon charters record already ‘old’ hedges, as well as those newly planted. Many came about from the clearance of woodland, their relict edges becoming boundaries for the new fields – ‘ghost woods’ providing an ecological thread back to the ancient ‘wildwood.’
The golden period for hedgerows was during the ‘Great Enclosures’ of 1750 to 1850, with more planted over one hundred years than the previous five centuries, as agriculture rushed to keep pace with the Industrial Revolution and its growing workforce. Before chemical fertilisers, soil fertility relied on the rotation of crops and livestock. Hedgerows were essential, practical structures – holding animals in the pasture on one side, out of the crops on the other. Infrastructure with a common purpose, but not uniform. Across the UK there are over 30 regional variations in the style of their traditional management, known as hedgelaying (in some dialects ‘plashing’). The ‘Midland Bullock’ being a particularly effective (and attractive) form, with the thorn-bearing ‘brush’ facing the livestock, the ‘plashed’ main stems and stakes presenting a clean, natural fence optimising the crop side, providing a windbreak, and habitat for pollinating and pest-predator insects. To create a stock-proof hedge, shrub and tree species are let grow for 10 – 15 years, then partially cut at their base and ‘laid’ at an angle, held in place by hazel stakes, and (depending on the style) finished with a woven top of pliant hazel rods to form a living, stock-proof barrier. Key species include blackthorn (its 3-inch thorns evolved to fend off more formidable beasts like the extinct, ancient Aurochs ), hawthorn, brambles, briar and dog roses. A standard method for dating hedgerows, (‘Hooper’s Rule’) is by counting the number of established species in a 30-yard stretch, each adding a century – England’s oldest hedgerow in Suffolk holds thirteen.
Hedgerows rootedness in our landscape seemed guaranteed, comparing 17th century parish maps with those of the early 20th century shows little change. Then came war. World War Two exposed our reliance on food imports. Over 2.5 million hectares of pasture went under the plough to boost home-grown production, hundreds of miles of hedgerows with them. Even greater losses followed during the next fifty years, driven not by U-boat torpedoes, but government policy and subsidy, accelerating when the UK joined the EU and its Common Agricultural Policy. Food surpluses, rather than shortages, provoked public concern as grain and beef ‘mountains’ piled up and almost half of the UK’s remaining hedgerows were ripped-out as fields were enlarged and amalgamated. This unstitching of ‘the fabric of the countryside’ only slowed with the passing of the Hedgerows Regulation Act of 1997 making it illegal to remove certain hedgerows. In the topsy-turvy world of agricultural policy, farmers now received grants for replanting the hedgerows they’d been paid to remove.
In 2023, the Government set a target to restore 45,000 miles of hedgerows in England by 2050. A welcome signal. But quality not quantity is key – 60% of our remaining hedgerows are in poor condition. Their optimal management would be by traditional hedgelaying, but that can’t compete on time and cost with a single-operator, tractor-mounted, ‘flail’ – 97% of our hedges are ‘flailed’ currently. Whilst a careful operator can furnish a neatly trimmed, tight hedge, too often brutally smashed stems and a gappy, open structure are the result.
If the function of hedgerows were merely as a barrier, barbed wire would have triumphed long ago. But as one of the least wooded countries in Europe, these ‘ghost woods’ provide a vital, default habitat to 80% of our native woodland birds. Human infrastructure usually hinders nature, hedgerows help, greater in length than the UK’s entire road network, they act as a natural super-highway criss-crossing the country. As a green, photosynthesising, infrastructure they provide additional (and proven!) ‘carbon-capture and storage’ – estimated to hold 9 million tonnes of carbon.
Semi-natural, functional structures and ecosystems created by us; hedgerows flourish with our active intervention. That’s why I’ve signed-up for a hedge laying course, so that with professional guidance, I can set-aside my laptop, take up a billhook and turn words into action. My inspiration the 300-foot stretch of the ‘Phoenix Hedge’, which runs modestly alongside a school playground in the Bristol suburb of Henleaze, yet is estimated to be 800 years old. Standing beside it, I sense it waiting patiently to be reconnected across the city to its country cousins…
‘Hedgerows’ or ‘hedges’?
Although the Anglo-Saxon origins of those current words seem to have been interchangeable, reflecting dialect and usage in different regions of the country, some contemporary commentators claim a distinction: asserting that a hedge morphs into a hedgerow when it contains other features such as prominent trees, a wall or earthwork at its base, partial fencing, and one or more gates. Under that definition most rural hedges should probably be termed hedgerows. Urban hedges are different in form, intended function, and the fauna and flora they support. But however functionally trivial as props and provocations to suburban farce, neighbourly feuds, and other shenanigans they might seem in comparison to their country cousins, urban hedges offer as equally critical environmental infrastructure.
The Great Hedge
An as yet unrealised dream from my time spent as a countryside campaigner is to connect town and country hedges into a continuous, interconnected network of wildlife corridors to form a revitalised ‘Great Hedge’ running east to west, north to south…
The History of the Countryside, Oliver Rackham, 1986.
A Natural History of the Hedgerow, John Wright, 2017
National Hedgelaying Society