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Enclosed areas of land are known in Cornwall from the Bronze
Age, while in Sussex, Kent and Norfolk some fields have been
interpreted as being of Roman origin. Field boundaries from
these times were earth ridges or made of stones, but it is
likely that even then dead hedges were being built. These
were wattle-type barriers made by weaving wands of young wood
around stakes hammered into the ground. These remained the
main type of field boundary into and through the Middle Ages.
It is not really known when live hedges were first planted,
but it is thought that before they were ever planted live
hedges came about when seedlings grew along the line of a
dead hedge or on an earth mound and were left to develop into
a natural, living barrier. Live hedges were almost certainly
being created in the late twelfth century when Kings John
and Richard enhanced the Royal treasury by leasing assarts
(areas of woodland cleared for agriculture) of the Royal Forests.
The law required perimeter fences (including hedges) to the
fields to be well maintained in order to prevent encroachment
onto the fields by the King’s game from the forest.
The practice of enclosing
small fields, started in the Bronze Age, is thought to have continued
into the Dark Ages, when open fields are thought to have first appeared.
The practice of farming strips in very large open fields then grew through
the Middle Ages. By Tudor times it was dominant in much of England and
most signs of the earlier system of small enclosures had gone.
Even in the part of England, including the East
Midlands, where open fields were dominant, enclosure continued locally
for very good reasons. However, up to the early seventeenth century there
were many Acts of Parliament against enclosure, which was effectively
illegal. The first Act of Parliament in support of enclosure, thereby
signalling the beginning of the end of the open field system was in 1603
and there were several more in the seventeenth century. This was when
live hedges started to be planted in large numbers. In England as a whole
the main period of enclosure, though, was between 1760 and 1820. In Nottinghamshire
there was frenetic enclosure activity in the periods 1765 to 1775 and
from 1790 to about 1820. It effectively ended in the county by1830. For
the next century there was relatively little change and then in the late
1940s wholesale grubbing up of hedges began as farmers modernised their
practices.
Hedges are best dated using maps and other documentary sources,
but in their absence a method based on counting species diversity
in 30m stretches of hedge was developed by E.Pollard, M.D.Hooper,
and N.W.Moore and is described in their book Hedges (Collins,
London, 1974). Another useful book, which also describes the
dating method is The History of the Countryside by Oliver
Rackham (J.M.Dent and sons Ltd, London 1986). The method,
commonly described as “Hooper’s Rule”, was
originally presented in the formula:
Age =(no of species in a 30 yard stretch) x 110 +
30 years.
It is usually simplified to counting the different species
of tree or shrub in 30 metre stretches of hedgerow. Several
30 m stretches should be counted in each hedgerow. The average
number of species equates to the age in centuries. It is advisable
not to start counting close to the start of a hedge where
anomalous species may occur and only established hedge plants
are counted, not seedlings.
Soon after publication of the method it was criticised
and in an article entitled Understanding Fields by Tom Williamson in the
Local Historian (Volume 33, No 1, 2003) he firmly states that it does
not work, citing evidence from various sources. At best this method gives
an approximation to the age and even supporters who have written about
it recommends that it should always be used in conjunction with documentary
evidence of age for hedges in the area.
Pollard and his colleagues divided hedges up into
two types. One type they called “pure” or “simple”;
the other type “mixed”. Pure hedges are those that have one
predominant species and will always have been planted. Commonly these
are hawthorn hedges that were planted as a single species hedge, though
it was not uncommon for elm and other timber trees to be planted as a
potential timber crop in the hedgerow alongside the hawthorn. The mixed
hedges, which do not generally have any one particular dominating species,
have different origins. They are usually old hedges. Some were planted
as mixed hedges. This is thought to have been common in early hedges likely
to have been made up of different seedlings collected from nearby woodland,
but there are examples of early nineteenth century hedges that were deliberately
planted as a mixed hedgerow. Two other types of mixed hedgerow have a
natural origin. In one type fence lines become colonised with hedgerow
plants and are left to develop into a natural, live hedge. In the other
the hedges were remnants of recently cleared woodland.
Midland hawthorn (Crataegus oxycanthoides)
with a bigger, far less indented leaf with more rounded lobes than
the common hawthorn. The haws, which are redder and more rounded
than the common hawthorn, contain two or more seeds. Ornamental
forms of this species have pink flowers.
Photo: Peter Allen
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A special factor that has to be taken into account is the
presence of two types of hawthorn. These are common hawthorn
(Crataegus monogyna) and midland hawthorn ( C. oxyacanthoides).
Common hawthorn, which has well dissected leaves, is by far
the commoner of the two. Characteristically it is found in
the wild state at the margins of woods or in open spaces and
is the variety that has been most widely used in planted hedges.
Midland hawthorn is a plant typical of mature woodland in
the East Midlands. Its leaves are less dissected and bigger
than the common hawthorn. Normally, the two species would
not grow together, but when they do they hybridise and produce
fertile offspring. Thus hybrids are very common and it may
be difficult to tell them from the two parent plants. A further
complication is that recently planted hedges often contain
a Dutch variety of hawthorn, not a native English species,
presumably bought in bulk cheaply by the County Council. For
these reasons it is usual to lump all varieties of hawthorn
together and count them as a single species.
Documentary evidence suggests that there were two periods of enclosure.
The first was in Elizabethan times; the second possibly as early as about
1680, but definitely before 1776. Thus, nearly all the hedges in Bingham
are older than at least 225 years and the majority may be as old as 325
years.
Using Hooper’s original formula
the hedges dating from 1680 should have an average of 2.7 or more if only
one type of shrub was planted originally. Of those hedges that are known
from maps to pre-date 1776 and fall into this category only 57% have averages
of 2.7 or more. 11% have averages less than 1.8.
Common hawthorn (Crataegus
monogyna) showing the typical small indented leaf. The haws
contain only a single seed.
Photo: Peter Allen
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There is evidence that the Earls of Chesterfield
did, in fact, plant trees for timber and shade along with hawthorn. Of
those hedges in which hawthorn is dominant 60% still contain ash (mostly),
oak or elm. Old farmers report that many of the timber trees in hedgerows
came down through old age in the 1950s and 1960s and were not replaced.
All elm trees, of course, died as a result of Dutch elm disease. Among
the pre-1776 hedges with an average of less than 2 species per 30m only
42% have timber trees. There is evidence that these hedges have been modified
since they were originally planted. Until the 1970s when the Bingham farmers
ceased keeping stock the hedges would have had to have been well maintained
and gaps filled. Many hedges contain the remains of old wooden fencing
with hawthorn that has never been laid growing through it. Elsewhere,
there are hawthorn hedges in which old, laid shrubs are intermixed with
quite young bushes that have never been laid. Nearly all the low average
hedges look like this.
It seems reasonable to conclude that Hooper’s
formula cannot be applied unmodified in Bingham. It is not known what
spacing there would have been between plantings of timber and shade trees
when the hedges were laid down, but where timber trees survive they occur
at less than 100m intervals. If Hooper’s formula is modified to
take this into account and a starting average of 1.3 is applied, the hedges
dating from 1680 should have an average of 3. In fact only 43% of the
pre-1776 hedges have an average of 3 or more.
15 hedges are known to have been planted between
1776 and 1832. Fewer than 40% of them have ash or elm, which may not have
been planted with such enthusiasm at this time. Four of them (27%) have
an expected average of 1.5.
Finally there are 9 hedges known to be younger than
between 1832 and 1850, but are not modern. Four have an average of 3;
three an average of 2; two are 1 and 1.2.
It is difficult to know how to interpret these results.
If it is valid to modify Hooper’s methodology to take account of
initial plantings of timber trees with the hawthorn, then only 43% of
the hedges have averages that are consistent with an age based on documentary
evidence. Among these are many mixed hedges that may never have had only
one species to start with. Moreover, there is no sensible pattern of averages
around field boundaries. Four hedges forming the boundary to a field that
clearly results from a single pre-1776 enclosure process can show a wide
range of averages. Examples are 1.4 to 3; 1 to 2.7; 2.5 to 3.3. An attempt
was made to distinguish the hedges that bounded what may have been the
original Medieval furlongs, from those of fields within them. There was
no clarity here.
Almost certainly many of Bingham’s hedges
have been modified in some way since their original planting, but there
is no documentary evidence to show how this would have affected the basis
for the Hooper formula. It has to be concluded that counting species per
30 metres does allow a crude separation into Elizabethan and later enclosure
hedges, but does not allow further analysis of the ages of hedges in Bingham.
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