"How tall were the hedgerows in Normandy?" Topic

"Last yesterday my wife and I did a tour of the beaches in Normandy. The tour guide pointed out that the farms in Normandy had a unique style if buildings. But the interesting part was that the current hedgerows are only 50 some years old. When the war ended the French government decided to remove all the hedgerows. Why they said the hedgerows impede the modernization of the country side. Later it became apparent why the hedgerows important to Normandy, wind soil erosion. In the 50's the wind had stripped off most of the good top soil. The farmer couldn't grow the food. It become like the dust bowl of Oklahoma. Don't make your hedgerows to small…."

From here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks, Armand. Very good cross-section and pictures.

Jim

I suppose the next question is how long is a piece of string? ;o)

Interestingly Billy, it's much the same whether you use Imperial or Metric.

Happy you enjoyed it my friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I remember seeing a documentary a few years ago. One of the things about hedges, apparently, is that they can be dated by how many different species they contain.

So the older they are the more varied the plants. And they gather new species at a fairly standard rate.

They had a hedge in Southern England that they demonstrated to be about eleven hundred years old.

The lane in those photos is just like a lot of lanes in Southern England. Especially Devon and Dorset. They've been removing hedges here as well, and also realised it was a bad idea!

Try going down into Papelotte, Smouhain, Lay Haie etc on the Allied left flank of a certain well known field south of Brussels. I now know what sunken road means…or did mean back then, in 18115. No place for cavalry, supply wagons or indeed any manoeuvre. OK, modern farming is destroying such.

But Normandy Bocage is different. This is banked up above ground level, hedged and then tended to reinforce the banks for hundreds of years. The lanes were almost ground level, the hedges were low maintenance fencing to keep critters in. At least until 1944.

Very like what is seen in Devon and Cornwall, just across La Manche. Funny that…..

Hedges are different than bocage, the latter of which is shown in the first diagram.

Bocage is basically an earth bank with a hedge on top, as deadhead describes.

The hedge still ages in the same way!

I grew up on the Isle Of Wight ( off the coast of Southern England, in case your geography needs a nudge!) and as kids we walked down lanes that had big earth banks with big thick hedges on top. We just didn't call it 'bocage' though…

AIUI, in ye olden dayf ye farmerf would have a hedge on the boundary and a ditch beyond it. So would the adjoining property so over time the double-width ditch between people's land became the road.

The bocage is the same thing except that the wind erodes the fields so that over time the field acquires a banked hedge which isn't easily removed because tree roots.

I'm not surprised by the 1,100-year-old hedge because if you think about the only time a hedge would be removed was if the same farmer acquired the land on both sides of it. As this wouldn't happen all that often, these boundaries would tend to persist for a very long time indeed.

Thanks!

Amicalement
Armand

I think I've read 10' – 20' for your normal "hedge".

Of course, that could be added on top of the earthen, "bocage" bank, making it even taller. Also, if/where trees are present in/on the "bocage", it can be 50' – 60' or more in height over the earthen bank, due to that.