What is hedge-laying?

Hedge-laying is how you keep a hedge alive and stockproof for another lifetime. A hedge left only to be trimmed grows tall and woody and goes gappy at the bottom, where cattle and sheep can push through; laying fixes that. The hedger cuts almost through each main stem near its base, bends it over at an angle and weaves it along the line, so the stem keeps growing horizontally and the whole hedge thickens from the ground up into a dense living fence. It is winter work, done with a billhook and now often a chainsaw, in distinct styles that change county by county. The archive has written about hedge-laying in the Marches but has not yet stood in a field and watched a hedge laid, so this entry defines the craft and says plainly where the first-hand record still has to be made.

A hedge is a living thing with a working life, and laying is the operation that renews it. Over time a hedge that is only cut on top becomes a line of tall, bare-stemmed shrubs with daylight under them - no use as a barrier. Laying takes those stems, cuts them most of the way through at the base, and lays them over near-horizontal, so new growth springs from along their length and from the cut stools, filling the bottom of the hedge solid again. Done well, one laying buys the hedge decades, and the cycle can be repeated for centuries.

So hedge-laying is not the same as hedge-trimming (the annual cut that keeps a laid hedge in shape) and not the same as planting a new hedge. It is the periodic, skilled rejuvenation in between - and it does two jobs at once: a stockproof farm boundary, and one of the richest wildlife habitats in the farmed landscape, a corridor of nesting, feeding and shelter running across otherwise open country.

A pleacher (or plasher) is a stem cut most of the way through and laid over; the uncut tongue of wood and bark that keeps it alive is the hinge. Stakes are the uprights driven along the hedge to hold the pleachers; the binders (or heatherings, or etherings) are the long whippy rods woven along the top of the stakes to lock the whole thing together. The brash is the brushwood trimmed off. The tool is the billhook, in many regional patterns. The finished, woven top is sometimes called the hedge top or, with its bound rods, the heathering.

The hedger works along the line in winter, when the sap is down and the birds have left. Each chosen stem is cut at an angle near the base, almost through, and laid over uphill along the hedge, the pleachers overlapping like courses; stakes are driven in to hold them, and binders are woven along the top to bind the stakes and finish the work. Surplus growth is trimmed out. What is left looks brutal in February and is a thick green wall by midsummer.

The striking thing about English hedge-laying is how local it is. Around thirty regional styles are recognised, each shaped by what the land had to hold and what grew there. The Midland (or bullock) style is staked down the centre and trimmed on both faces to turn heavy cattle; the Devon style is laid on top of an earth-and-stone bank; the Welsh border, Lancashire and Westmorland, and many others each have their own way of setting the pleachers, stakes and binders. The National Hedgelaying Society keeps these styles alive partly through competitive hedging matches, where the regional forms are judged side by side.

The archive’s essay The Marches Hedge Layer takes up the craft in the border country, but the archive has not yet documented a hedge being laid first-hand - has not followed a hedger down a line in winter with the billhook. That is the honest position, and hedge-laying is firmly among the crafts the archive intends to document, ideally across more than one regional style so the differences are on the record. When it is, this page will carry the work in place of this note.

Hedge-laying very nearly went under. Mechanised flail-trimming and the grubbing-out of hedges for bigger fields hollowed out the craft and the hedge network alike in the second half of the twentieth century. It has come back further than most of the crafts in this glossary, for two reasons: the National Hedgelaying Society and its matches kept the regional styles and the skills alive, and agri-environment schemes now pay for hedges to be laid for their wildlife and landscape value. There is real, paid work for hedgers again - though the number of people who can lay a good hedge, in the right local style, is still finite and ageing.

It is learned in the field, on courses and at hedging matches, and by working alongside an experienced hedger. The archive’s Learn a Craft directory points to where it is taught.

Why lay a hedge instead of just trimming it?
A trimmed hedge eventually grows leggy and gappy at the base, where stock can push through. Laying cuts the stems most of the way through and bends them over to grow horizontally, thickening the bottom of the hedge into a dense, living, stockproof barrier and giving the plants decades more life.

What is a pleacher?
A pleacher (or plasher) is a hedge stem that has been cut most of the way through near its base and bent over to be laid along the hedge line. The thin tongue of wood and bark left uncut keeps the pleacher alive so it goes on growing after it is laid.

What are the regional styles of hedge-laying?
England has many, shaped by local farming. The Midland (or bullock) style is double-staked and trimmed both sides to hold cattle; the Devon style is laid on an earth bank; the Welsh border and Lancashire and Westmorland styles each have their own form. Around thirty regional styles are recognised.