Testing boundaries

We are a nation of hedge lovers-and rightly so-but there are myriad traditional means of dividing land and containing livestock that are both charming and a boon to wildlife. Octavia Pollock reports

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HEDGEROWS are justly celebrated and their demise rightly lamented, but they are not the only traditional way of delineating field boundaries. Dictated by the topography, geology and requirement, barriers range from deep rhynes to dry-stone walls via palings of chestnut or oak. Each is perfectly suited to its place, complementing the landscape in the same way as a vernacular cottage does. It will do its job of containing livestock as well as any wire barrier-and with infinitely more charm.

Criss-crossing the Pennines, Cotswolds, Dartmoor and Cumbria are networks of drystone walls. With immense skill, wallers take the natural building material all around and weave it into a structure that can withstand anything but the most determined flock of sheep. Employing no mortar, hence 'dry', the walls rely on gravity, good bedding and the careful interplacing of the stones, whether long and flat or small and lumpy, so that weight, friction and position hold them in place without an inclination to crumble. Such is the strength of these walls, they will hold firm even if the foundation sinks, the stones themselves staying in place until decades of neglect scatter them.

The building material ranges from the golden limestone of the Cotswolds, which knows 'the trick of keeping the lost sunlight of centuries glimmering upon them', according to J. B. Priestley, to the dark, mossy-green slate of the Lake District and the grey-white limestone of the Pennines. Walls are usually capped with coping and strengthened with large through stones in the middle; stones jutting out offer footholds for climbing over. In Scotland, turf tops are common.