60 Plant-life of the Oxford District 



(4) The true Hedgerow, as generally understood, is a more complex 

 construction, as an earth bank separating fields, etc. ; the material used to 

 build the wall being taken from the ground level, and leaving a ditch- 

 depression at its foot, which subserves drainage ; while arborescent forms 

 are planted as shrubs or small trees on the top to increase the obstruction 

 to cattle or human beings. Such a hedge is required to be strong enough 

 to keep a bullock from thrusting through, or a horse from jumping over. 



The characteristic hedge is built from sets or seedlings of spinous 

 Hawthorn (Crataegus monogynd). Trees may be subsequently encouraged 

 in such a hedge, as affording casual shade for cattle, and for utilization as 

 rough timber ; these being left to grow on as standards, when the thorns 

 are periodically trimmed. The leaves shed from the deciduous shrubs 

 accumulate in the hedge-bottom, as a humus-soil which may be of no 

 great thickness, but serves as a nidus for a large collection of woodland 

 plants, together with many intrusives from waste places. 



The hedge is in fact a miniature edition of woodland, but regressive 

 and artificial rather than vestigial. The upper part may epitomize standards 

 with coppice, as the wet ditch may recall swamp- woodland, or the grass and 

 herbage of the sides a mixed pasture. The wooded portion has been 

 commonly so treated by the agriculturalist, with suggestions of an under- 

 wood rotation and the felling of standard trees ; while the herbage may be 

 cut in the manner of hay for fodder and bedding. It is, in fact, this character 

 of presenting a sample of all types of country vegetation which makes these 

 structures so characteristic of English scenery, and so interesting botanically. 

 In the course of years, such hedgebanks attain a considerable size, and take 

 up a considerable proportion of the land under cultivation. The standard 

 trees, for example, may affect planted crops injuriously for a distance much 

 farther in than that of their leafy canopy (to 50 ft.). Hedges may consider- 

 ably add to the aesthetic aspect of the landscape, but economically they are 

 unsound, and often a nuisance. On the whole they are to be regarded as 

 the survival of a past epoch. 



The formation of hedgerows is of comparatively modern growth. In 

 mediaeval England, beyond fences and walls around gardens and orchards, 

 there were practically no hedges. Under the feudal manorial system of 

 land-occupation, the greater part of arable land was worked in common under 

 the Lord of the Manor, only fenced in when the crops were standing. Beyond 

 the more cultivated tracts was open common land, including waste and 

 woodland, where this last was not a part of a Royal forest preserved for 

 game. 



Hedges delimiting smaller tracts of land came in with the decay of the 

 feudal system, and after the Wars of the Roses, with more particularly an 

 increased output of cattle and the beginning of an improved agriculture. Such 

 enclosures of arable land, thus manured for growing corn, as field-units 

 specialized for different agricultural work, increasing from the sixteenth to the 

 eighteenth centuries, encouraged the small-holder, and led to the system of 

 farming which has continued to the present day. It must not be confused 

 with the enclosure of open common grazing-ground and waste-land for cattle 

 and sheep-runs, which was a fruitful source of rioting on the part of dispossessed 

 peasantry from the fourteenth century to the present time. 



It would appear that hedges were constructed primarily with a view to the 

 needs of stock-raising ; and their persistence and prevalence indicate a district 

 given over to cattle-rearing rather than to cultivation of cereals. From such 

 a standpoint the advantages of hedges are obvious, as they are numerous 

 (Fitzherbert, 1523, Book of Husbandry, and The Book of Surveying). They 

 may be regarded as a more permanent extension of the method of folding sheep 

 with hurdles. Cattle-herds were dispensed with ; small tracts of land could be 

 grazed and intensively manured without damaging and trampling the whole. 



