hedges

HEDGES
For enclosure to be effective, the fields had to be hedged about. How
was this done in Devon, by the creation of ‘mighty great hedges’11 and
banks, has always provoked comment, as it does today, and for sure
did so in Cromwell’s time. A ‘hedge’ in Devon was, in fact, an earth
(or partly stone) bank, sufficiently packed with earth on the top and
inside to grow hedgerow plants and trees. The bank might be solely
of earth, faced with turf from the sward of the adjacent fields, as was
done in the South Hams. It might be of stone alone, as on Dartmoor.
Most commonly, it was a mixture of large stones picked up or
ploughed up in the field, and earth from purposely dug ditches on
each side of the bank, all formed into an upright bank up to six-feet
high with a substantial topping of earth, into which hazel, thorn, withy
and beech plants were set (Fig. 2). The plants were allowed to grow
into young trees, and were then cut, not quite through, and laid - not
quite horizontally - to provide an interwoven, live, growing hedge on
the top of the bank: a fairly formidable obstacle to stock, provided the
maintenance was good (Fig 3).

The Devon hedge had other considerable virtues. At 5-6 feet high,
such hedges offer good shelter for stock from wind and rain, thereby
reducing the need for permanent buildings. Milking cows, calves, and
fattening stock were housed in small numbers, but young stock and
sheep made for the ‘lew’ (lee) of the bank in windy, cold, wet weather,
and huddled under the hedge.

Likewise, hedges were a productive source of firewood from the
regular cutting of the hedgerow timber. Hedge plants were allowed to

[Figure 2. A ‘Dumnonian’hedgebank; a stone wall, surmounted by an earth bank,
topped with an interlaced hedge]

grow upright stems and trunks for upwards of ten years. By then, the
stems could be cut up into good cordwood for logs, and brushwood
for the copper.   What looked - to the unknowing - like a hopelessly
overgrown hedge, was that height and width for a purpose.   Every
farm would have its quota of ‘neglected’ hedges awaiting the saw and
the axe.   They were part of the plan; they were cut, laid, hedged and
rebuilt when one of the grass fields that they bounded took its turn in
rotation to be ploughed.   Cutting turfs from the field to form a face for
the newly made up hedgebank, and making fires from the brushwood,
made a mess of the sward, but that did not matter if the field was then
ploughed.   The removal of the shade and the drips from the high
hedgerow timber was beneficial to the corn crop that invariably fol-
lowed.   None of this was haphazard, but part of a well-understood
(but not obviously self evident) plan that might need explanation to a
stranger.

The need for firewood was huge and a farmer was not a ‘good hus-
band’ if he did not provide it. Big farmhouses, with a fire in the hall

[Figure 3. The plants topping ‘Dumnonian’ hedgebanks were allowed to grow into young
trees and were then cut - not quite through - and laid to provide an interwoven, living
barrier as a fairly formidable obstacle to stock]

kitchen only, were cold.   A big log fire needed a draught to make it burn
up and draw. If there was not enough firewood, or peat, or ‘vags’
(dried turfs), houses were very cold.   No farmyard in Devon was
complete without its rick of faggots of brushwood and its enviable
‘wigwams’ of poles for cordwood (Fig. 4). Producing firewood was
part of husbandry.   It was probably easier to keep warm in hedged
enclosed country than in hedge-less open field villages.   Enclosure thus
had beneficial side effects - farmers would not need or expect to pay for
fuel to keep their homes warm. Labourers could sometimes ‘take’ an
uncut hedge and lay it in their own time for the firewood - for a price.
There was in fact money to be made on the farm from supplying fire
wood and firewood faggots to towns, and the poorest land on the farm
could be turned to good use growing furze (gorse).