When was the last time you saw a hedge that had been laid? A rare sight I would suggest. An ever rarer sight is a hedge layer working at his craft. A few days ago, in the middle of March, I was privileged enough to find both. A chance encounter on a lane just outside the village of Shrewton led to a fascinating and entertaining chat with hedge layer and hurdle maker Bill Oram.
Now in his mid 70s Bill has plied his craft all his working life from his home in Market Lavington. Now semi-retired he is as enthusiastic as ever about his work even running free hedge laying courses. But what exactly is hedge laying?
The earliest written evidence of a hedge dates to 816 AD in Somerset with the earliest record of hedge planting being in Wiltshire in 940. The word ‘hedge’ derives from the Old English ‘hecg’ meaning any fence, living or artificial, so an earth bank would be caught by this definition. Whilst the Romans brought their long tradition of living hedges to Britain with them (elm was a favourite plant) it’s thought that hedges/boundaries may have appeared in Britain as early as the Bronze Age 4,000 years ago. These early boundaries between land are assumed to have been marked simply by low banks of earth, although I am happy to be corrected on this point if living hedges were also used.
During the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain hedges were relatively scarce as the Anglo-Saxons in the 8th century used the open field system of farming whereby the land was cultivated in strips and farmed collectively. In some areas of Britain hedges were removed to enable this process. The surviving living hedgerows were limited to use as village or parish boundaries. The Normans actively cleared woods to create land for cultivation and grazing on a bigger scale, and the remaining wood boundaries were used to create hedges. Meanwhile the open field farming system continued to grow until the middle of the 12th century. At around this time strips of land began to be aggregated together and privatised which necessitated the planting of new hedges as boundaries.
The first enclosures, the appropriation of common land, took place in the 16th century. The first Enclosure Act was in 1603 and this saw the beginning of an enclosure movement lasting several centuries which resulted in over 5,000 separate Enclosure Acts enclosing over 7 million acres of open fields or common land. These newly enclosed parcels of land, large and small, required boundaries which led to an explosion in the number of hedges. It is estimated that over 200,000 miles of hedge were planted between 1750 and 1850 and that this was as much as in the previous 500 years.
After the Enclosure acts, each man had to dig a ditch to create a boundary, piling up the soil on his side and planting bushes on the soil to keep livestock on his land. This was hard work so, when creating boundaries, the ditch was often left out (unless drainage was needed). Bushes were still planted and even if there was no bank they kept the name they have today: a hedge.
“Planting 'on the flat', as opposed to setting the hedge on a bank, was rare before the 19th century. It first came into common local use in Yorkshire's Vale of Pickering where as early as 1785 hedges were made by digging a trench, setting the plants along the vertical side and then backfilling. But it was the advent of the railways which encouraged flat planting, for the engineers preferred their hedges unbanked and often unditched as well. Soon farmers in many areas adopted this practice, which was cheaper and often made for better growth. The old 'bank and ditch' was finally outmoded. Flat planting gradually evolved in its turn so that the most usual modern method is 'ditch and hedge'. In this method a ditch is dug beside the hedge and the hedge is planted on a bank which is so low as to be negligible compared to older banks.” (Isle of Wight Hedgerow Group).
After the Second World War mechanisation and large-scale farming saw a loss of over a third of our hedgerows between 1945 and 1990. It is estimated that there were 352,000 miles of hedge in England and Wales in 1984. By 1990 this had fallen to 270,000 miles and by 1993 to 236,000. Now hedgerows are protected and landowners are encouraged to maintain or plant new hedgerows.
A formula has been developed for dating hedges based on the number of tree and shrub species per unit length. This is known as the ‘Hooper formula’. The number of tree and shrub species in a 30 metre length of hedge can indicate its age, with one species for each 100 years. A single species hedge is likely to be less than 100 years old whilst a 1,000 year old hedge is likely to contain ten to twelve species. But this is a rule of thumb and in the hedge planting work I've done as a Natural England volunteer we use multiple species when planting a new hedge row.
The practice of hedge laying has existed for hundreds of years. It is a process of enhancing and maintaining the integrity of a hedge, primarily to keep livestock contained but as a bi-product it creates a valuable habitat and food source, and a corridor for birds and small mammals. A mismanaged hedge becomes spindly and weak and full of gaps which a determined farm animal can breach. Laying the hedge thickens and strengthens it which over years of renewed growth creates an impenetrable barrier.
The process of hedge laying involves firstly clearing away surplus material before making a cut, usually with a billhook, at an angle part of the way through each stem a few centimetres above ground level. The stems or pleachers are then laid over at an angle somewhere between 35 and 45 degrees. Near the top of the hedge the stem/pleacher is then cut at an angle. Stakes are driven in vertically at regular intervals in the centre line of the hedge. Binders are woven between the stakes with ends wedged behind the stakes. Both the stakes and binders are usually from hazel. The top and sides of the hedge are then tidied and trimmed. All of this takes place in the laying season between September and April (although usually the end of March), after which birds may be nesting in the hedgerow which must not be disturbed. The convention is that hedge laying can be done during any month with an ‘r’ in it.
Flailing a hedge may seem like a brutal process but it is still necessary even when a hedge has been laid. Hedge laying is a time consuming and costly process so is carried out (if at all) every 10-15 years. In between time annual trimming or flailing promotes fresh growth and maintains the density of a healthy hedge.
When I met Bill he was laying a hedge that he last attended to 25 years ago. Unfortunately at that time he was not able to lay it in his preferred way so on this day he was trying to rescue a sorry looking hedge with large gaps in it. In the photographs I took of him you can see that he was slightly above me, this particular hedge having been planted on a bank above the road in which I was standing. I returned a few days later to find that he had largely finished his work, having laid the hedge on all four sides of the field. The transformation was stark even though it will be some years before it fills its potential.
There are several different styles of hedge laying to reflect a region’s farming practices and its native trees and shrubs, for example Yorkshire, Devon, South of England, Somerset, Midland, Welsh Border. In the South of England style the hedge is cut and laid over to create a double brush on both sides. A single line of hazel stakes is driven into the centre of the hedge, with the top bound with hazel binders. Both sides of the hedge are then trimmed immediately after the hedge has been laid. To my untrained eye this seemed to have been what Bill had done.
Whilst my encounter with Bill lasted only 20 minutes or so it was a memorable one. A larger than life character he had me in stitches with his stories and his claims to Viking ancestry. I don’t often take photographs of people but when I do it is usually after a long chat during which time both my subject and I have relaxed. Bill made for a fantastic subject and I hope I have captured something of his infectious nature.
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