Field Boundaries

On the 4th of March, we held our meeting on field boundaries and their management with about 35 people present. We had invited two outside speakers, both of whom were none too well on the day, but came nonetheless, and we were most appreciative of their dedication.

George Peterken introduced the subject with a few slides about the history of the Hudnalls and the origins of the walls and hedges as structures thrown up during the colonisation of the common around 1800. There then followed a series of photos of field boundaries on the Hudnalls, showing the complete range from hedges to walls and the variety of hybrids between walls and hedges that are a peculiarity of our district.

Using George’s photos as background, John Flower spoke about hedge management. He now lives in Kent, but he came from the Lower Wye and has a base on Howle Hill, from which he works part-time as a hedge layer in Herefordshire. He gave some general advice, but we thought afterwards that he had been mildly disconcerted by our hedges, which, unlike those in other parts of Britain, range from thin straggles of shrubs beside a fence to linear woodlands and tracts of mown scrub that have grown thicker than the average country lane. Chris Hodge, who is well known locally not just for repairing walls, but for running training sessions on behalf of the AONB, responded to our photos with some really interesting advice and personal experiences. Evidently, our walls and those of the Conglomerate/Sandstone outcrops elsewhere in the Lower Wye, are unlike the walls anywhere else, and he urged us to maintain them in the informal form in which they had been built. Sarah Sawyer showed a few photos of trainees rebuilding a wall under Chris’s guidance.