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.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 14, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 14, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
