'By 2500BC rows of shrubs were planted'

HEDGEROWS are a construct of man. You cannot rewild a hedge because they were never wild. Archaeology reveals that by 2500BC, Britain’s earliest farmers were planting rows of shrubby thorn plants, then cutting and laying them to form livestock retaining enclosures.

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The traces of these early hedges can still be seen today.

After harvest, when the summer sun bakes the stubbles dusty yellow, the land can reveal ancient secrets to a drone’s questing camera. Dark lines, the memories of hedgerows long gone, spread out like the veins on the back of an old man’s hand.

The more we Britons mastered agriculture, the more hedges proliferated.

They kept livestock in place and gifted tender crops some protection from the elements. Hedges acted as a visible boundary moreover, between parishes, estates, farms, fields and cottages.

When they grew too large and shaded out growing crops, they were coppiced to the ground and allowed to regrow.

If gaps appeared, enabling cattle or sheep to escape, they were filled by laid lengths.

Trees grew within the hedgerows, becoming mighty black poplars, cracked elms or curlicued oaks.

Many of the lonely trees we still see standing incongruously in fields of crops, remind us that a hedge once ran there.