Chartridge and Pednor Hedgerows
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CHAR TRIDGE AND PEDNOR HEDGEROWS: A LANDSCAPE STUDY PETER CASSELDEN PART II: IMPLICATIONS FOR LANDSCAPE HISTORY The second part of Mr Casselden 's study explores in detail what can be learned about the landscape history of a small area of the central Chi/terns, from the vegetation of its hedges (surveyed in Part /). Certain limitations of the 'Hooper formula' for dating hedges are discussed, and some correctives proposed. Among these are complete shrub profiles for entire hedges, noting the presence or absence of particular shrubs, and the herbaceous layer at the hedge-bottom. It is shown that it is possible to follow the course of the tide of clearance outwards from the nucleus of Chesham, to trace the outlines of former common fields, early assarts and their sub-divisions, and to suggest the date by which enclosure of the common fields was virtually complete. The Earliest Hedges regarded as below the true value, although In attempting to date hedges it is valuable subsequent checking of hedge sections has to have some of known date as a point of shown that my initial survey was not seriously reference, but for the period before 1500 inaccurate. source material is rarely detailed enough to allow this. However, for the Chi! terns area we Even allowing for a slightly less rigorous have one early bench-mark in the Black Hedge methodology there are some hedges in and near Princes Risborough, mentioned as an near the survey area that will bear comparison estate boundary in a charter of 903 and with the Black Hedge. For example, the first therefore over a thousand years old. The more nine sections of the boundary bank of species-rich parts of this boundary bank have Captain's Wood at its southern end over• an average of 12.2 species of shrub or tree per looking the Asheridge Road have an average 30 yard section, which according to the formula shrub count of 12.1 species per section. This for dating devised by Dr Max Hooper (Pollard, bank would have been topped in all probability Hooper and Moore 1974, 79) would place its by a paling fence at first and the process of origin in the eighth century. The estimated shrub acquisition would then have followed accuracy of this formula is however only ± 200 a similar process to that of an ordinary bound• years, so no more firm conclusion can be ary bank. reached than that the known date of the boundary and the apparent age of the hedge The position of Captain's Wood on the brow roughly correspond. of the valley at the boundary between communities, its sinuous shape, large bank and This hedge has had special attention and the long list of plant species all point to it being a figure of 12.2 species per section is therefore primary wood, in continuous existence since the likely to be the true value. In my own survey earliest settlement. Its boundary bank is work, for reasons outlined in Part I of this paper, therefore likely to date from the valley the average figure for the number of shrubs in clearance, being in effect the tidal edge of that any particular hedge by 30 yard sections can be clearance. On present knowledge that clearance 133 Ch._ins I /'1elres zoo ---- Jtedge:J noi: surveyed -------- Hedge remnanl.s on!:J Fig. 1. The survey area with field names. 134 was part of the Saxon expansion westward clearance landscape these new habitats offered from the central nucleus of Chesham at a date the earliest opportunities for many plants to well before 1000. The botanical evidence establish themselves in a man-made country• supports this. No doubt there was earlier side. The history of these early hedges is still farming in the valley, although no Roman villa reflected in their shrub composition. site has yet been found upstream of the Latimer site, but the collapse of the Chiltern There are a few hedges with a comparable economy almost certainly led to much farmland shrub range to the primary wood edges. Two of reverting to scrub and ultimately woodland in these adjoin Captain's Wood, running down the succeeding centuries. That the Saxons the valley side from the wood edge at points found a certain amount of land being cultivated where embayments begin or end. The unusual by Britons is suggested by the field name Great feature of these hedges is that they change Cumbers, which seems to contain Welsh cymry, character abruptly half way down the valley but it is unlikely that the Saxon colonisers side, to be continued by a hedge with a much found any very extensive cultivated area when simpler structure and lower shrub count. One they penetrated the Chess valley and the of them changes at this point (SP 949034) from boundary banks of such woods as Captain's a single to a double hedge, becoming a lane, Wood are unlikely to pre-date the Saxons. now abandoned. These hedges have shrub counts of 12 and 10 in their older sections, and The continuation of the west edge of similar hedges adjoining Long Grove and a Captain's Wood northwards is by a series of former wood edge in Herberts Hole have an bays which may represent successive stages of average of 11.7 and 11.5 species per section. clearance along the valley side. Not all these These older sections also terminate before the bays have high shrub counts, the figure ranging valley bottom to be completed by later hedges. from 7.9 to 11.4 per section, but there are Other hedges adjoining these woods and problems of assessment because in some places dateable to the sixteenth and seventeenth the boundary bank now lies within the wood, centuries do not show anything like their while elsewhere it has suffered from grazing richness of species. It seems therefore that they pressure and the shrub line is very thin. Long are pre-enclosure and their origins are bound Grove has a very similar aspect, being on the up with the successive stages of clearance boundary between the fields of Chesham and which are marked in the wood embayments. It those of Chartridge. The edge of this wood is is the more modern extensions of these hedges also indented with bays and the average shrub which date from the enclosure of common count of about 11 species per section is fields. comparable with Captain's Wood. The remainir..g hedges with a range of species All these wood boundary banks have a range to mark them out as among the earliest features of species which make them comparable with of the farmed landscape are the boundaries of the Black Hedge. Their location and shape lanes. A long stretch of the southern hedge of together with the internal flora of the wood Blind Lane, leading to Hundridge, has an where it still exists, accord well with a Saxon average shrub count of nearly 10, with 13 date. The shrub content of hedges and species recorded for some sections. This stretch boundary banks should however be compared of the lane must have had a separate origin for with the total range of shrubs and trees it has no bluebells in the herb layer, unlike the occurring in a particular locality. Hedges and rest of the lane's hedges to east and west. In wood edges form a unique habitat, since within addition those sections of the lane immediately them the natural succession from grass through adjacent have continuous hornbeam, a tree scrub to woodland is halted in its middle phase closely associated with wood boundary banks and although that 'scrub' gets increasingly in the conquest period. Several sections of rich in species, no final demise of non• Blind Lane have shrub counts of more than woodland plants takes place. In the post- 8 species per section, but the hedges were not 135 homogeneous in origin. Much of the lane seems above 5 species per section, while towards to have run through or alongside woodland in Pednor there is a former wood edge-a con• the medieval period, but this species-rich tinuous planting of hornbeam with bluebell at section without bluebell at the base seems to be the base and an average of 6.5 species per the earliest example of a hedge running across section. arable land. Its shrub count would make it early Norman at the latest and it may have been The Hollow Way hedge seems to have grown an estate boundary which continued to east and up as scrub on the bank of the lane leading to west along the borders of woodland. Fig. 2 the settlement at Pednor. The lack of any shows the species density of hedges in the woodland element in its make-up suggests that survey area. the lane ran through arable land when the bank was formed, as far as a point at the top of the 500 hill where it reached a wooded area. It is one of ,--- HJ the earliest features of the landscape. (The northern bank of the Hollow Way has however 400 ,--- 393 -l81 been remodelled, probably in the nineteenth century, and its plant population has a much 300 ,---- more recent structure.) A remarkably similar 286 hedge is to be found on the Asheridge road r-- 200 2.31 where it climbs the hill. This hedge is in much better condition and has over 9 species per - "1-5 r-- I :>f. section and a similar range of shrubs, including !OQ one section with privet. The presence of hornbeam in this case raises the question of a +9b•o .L I possible woodland ongm although other -.rE2 3 4 5 6 7 g 9 to ll 12 1.3 t4 Kumber of !pcte.s_per s~chrm factors such as the absence of bluebell both in this hedge and others in the valley argue against Fig.