Hedge Laying

Here's a sight that you don't see very often these days - a newly laid hedge. I found this old picture, that I must have taken fifteen years ago, amongst some old colour transparencies. The fresh, new cuckoo pint leaves at the bottom of the hedge show that it was a very early spring day and I can remember stopping the car to take the picture, somewhere between Kirkby Stephen and Sedburgh in the Howgills. This is a very laborious method of hedge management but when hedge laying is well done it produces a stock-proof barrier that will last for decades with only minimal maintenance. Young hawthorn stems are partially severed, bent over and then tied into stakes, then...

... when spring arrives vigorous new, prickly shoots grow up through the laid stems and produce a living, interlocking barrier. There are some very fine examples to be seen on the National Hedgelaying Society web site. It must be hard work, tough on the hands with all those hawthorn spines, so I guess it's no wonder that flail cutting hedges with a tractor has taken over, but although that keeps hedges in shape it can never produce the dense growth at the bottom of a laid hedge that stops a sheep pushing its way through. Annual flail cutting also tends to remove all of last year's young shoots that bear flowers buds - so no flowers for insects in early summer or haws for the birds to feed on in autumn.

You can often see old hawthorns that were once part of hedges that were laid in the distant past. The horizontal branches with vertical growths are a tell-tale sign ...

Long ago, someone must have spent several days laying this old hedge ......

... and you can still see the legacy of their work in the distinctive silhouettes of these ancient hawthorns.

Not Just Any Old Iron.......

Over the years I must have opened and closed hundreds of gates during country walks and I've always been intrigued by the wide range of traditional latches and fastenings, many made locally by blacksmiths. These are now being replaced by modern, mass-produced galvanished versions, which I doubt will be anywhere near as durable as the rusty iron originals. This hook for a chain fastening is on a gatepost on the footpath to Aydon Castle, near Corbridge.

One of things I like about the originals is that, many years after they were made, you can still see the marks where the blacksmiths hammer crashed into red-hot iron, sending out a shower of sparks. Every piece is unique.

There was once a substantial rural industry in small iron objects like this made in local smithies. Chains, forged a link at a time ....

... sometime with a distinctive twist.

Not all of these objects are hand-made - I suspect this lovely nail, with its spiral twist that would make it very difficult to pull out, must have been made by some mass-production process - but rust adds a lovely patina to the surface.

Here's a combination of cast iron and wrought iron, at the entrance to a bridge over the River Tees downstream from High Force.

I particularly like this chain and swivel hook, forged from thick wire, that dangles from a gate on the fells above St. John's Chapel in Weardale.

Generations of hands that have pushed aside this iron gate latch have polished the surface smooth.

Time takes its toll and eventually they'll all rust away - the last vestiges of the small, everyday objects that were once turned out in slack periods by rural blacksmiths, until a bigger job came along.