sevenTeenTh-CenTury environmenTs: farmland^47represented direct intakes from ancient woodland, preserving the slow-
colonizing plants like wood anemone characteristic of this environment.
Hedges were often managed by plashing or laying. This occurred at
intervals of 10–15 years and took a number of local and regional forms, all
in essence involving the drastic cutting back of the hedge with a billhook
and the removal of lateral suckers, dead material, thick old trunks and
unwanted species (such as elder, which provides a poor barrier to stock).
The principal stems, or ‘pleachers’, were then cut three-quarters of the way
through at an angle of 45–60 degrees, at around 5–10 cm above the ground,
and bent downwards so that each overlapped with its neighbour. As growth
resumed in the spring, a thick wall of vegetation was formed. In some forms
of the practice the pleachers were woven through upright stakes (‘stabbers’),
and both held in place by ‘hethers’ or ‘binders’ – twisted rods of elm or
hazel which formed a kind of continuous ‘cable’ along the top of the hedge
(Figure 10).^40 Modern conservation groups sometimes assume that plashing
was the universal mode of management in the past but in many districts
hedges were managed by coppicing, like the understorey of woods.^41 Their
constituent shrubs were simply cut back to within a few inches of the ground
at intervals of between 10 and 20 years (Figure 11). Coppicing required less
skill than laying and produced more useable firewood, although it caused
figure 10 Typical laid hedge, showing stabbers (vertical stakes) and hethers (the
‘cable’ running along the top of the hedge).