Can you really just walk across open private land in England? How exactly does one lay a hedgerow and what were they for? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this episode of My Cousin Jane.
Welcome back to My Cousin Jane. Today we’re going to be talking about Persuasion Chapter 10, but not like your English lit teacher might discuss it, but more like the deleted scenes and bonus features of your favorite movie.
In Chapter 10, we are going to go on a walk through the countryside, and though not everyone in the party realizes it, we’re going to end up paying a visit to Charles Hayter’s home in Winthrop.
We talked a bunch about Charles Hayter in the last episode, and today we’re going to visit his house. Sort of. Some people are going to visit his house. The point-of-view characters are not, unfortunately, so we don’t actually get to see what it looks like.
House Names
I can’t remember if we discussed this in prior episodes or not, and this point may be obvious to many of the listeners, but one thing that’s fun about England is that many houses and almost all the estates have names rather than, or sometimes in addition to, numbers.
Even today, if you own a house in the UK, for a small fee, you can apply with your local city or village council and the Royal Postal Service to name your house. Some British realtors say that having a named house can add as much as 5,000 pounds to its value. Why live at number 11 Windsor Way when you can live in Shell Cottage, for example?
I mention that because Winthrop, the unspoken destination for our walk today, isn’t a town. It’s the name of Charles Hayter’s estate.
Let’s hear a brief, though poetic, clip about the thoughts of Anne Elliot regarding where they’re walking today. As always, our audio recordings come from the talented Karen Savage over at LibriVox.org.
Anne’s object was, not to be in the way of anybody; and where the narrow paths across the fields made many separations necessary, to keep with her brother and sister. Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves, and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which had drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. Persuasion, Chapter 10
Very poetic.
Footpaths
I want to call attention to this phrase, “the narrow paths across the fields.” Most of England, and the rest of the UK in fact, is connected by a network of what are called footpaths or bridleways or byways. Footpaths, like the name implies, means paths that anyone can walk along. Bridleways are for people or horses, and byways also allow vehicles.
The UK has a long history of what is known as the “right to roam.” These are a set of laws that make sure people are able to roam or walk from one end of the countryside to the other in a relatively unimpeded way.
Because of these laws, most farmers’ fields, country estates, and other bits of private property will often have public footpaths and sometimes even bridleways and byways that cut through those fields, so that you can walk across someone’s land without trespassing, as long as you stay on the narrow path.
The laws related to those paths have changed quite a bit over the centuries, but the spirit of the right to roam has largely persisted. Today it’s helped on quite a bit by a group called the Ramblers’ Association. If you go to their website and enter in your postcode of wherever you live in England, you’ll find a list of cross-country walks and information about them, and local meeting times if you don’t want to walk alone.
You can also purchase what are called Ordnance Survey maps, which have footpaths all over the place clearly marked out and color-coded with information about them.
The paths themselves are a mix of different things. Some of them are relatively new paths, some of them are old, some of them are even ancient and rich in history. You might find a footpath that used to be part of, say, an Anglo-Saxon trade route or a Bronze Age migration route. You could find an ancient Roman road, and there are even some prehistoric paths leading between town sites and sources of water. It’s all fascinating if you’re into history.
As you read this chapter, imagine Anne and friends walking along this narrow path (sometimes these paths are just single file, they’re that narrow) that traverses one or more farmers’ fields and other private estate lands between Uppercross and Winthrop.
Hedgerows
Once they reach Winthrop, Charles Musgrove and Henrietta head off to visit Charles Hayter, and everyone else dawdles about in the hedgerows that line the path. Let’s listen to this clip.
The brow of the hill, where they remained, was a cheerful spot: Louisa returned; and Mary, finding a comfortable seat for herself on the step of a stile, was very well satisfied so long as the others all stood about her; but when Louisa drew Captain Wentworth away, to try for a gleaning of nuts in an adjoining hedge-row, and they were gone by degrees quite out of sight and sound, Mary was happy no longer; she quarrelled with her own seat, was sure Louisa had got a much better somewhere, and nothing could prevent her from going to look for a better also. She turned through the same gate, but could not see them. Anne found a nice seat for her, on a dry sunny bank, under the hedge-row, in which she had no doubt of their still being, in some spot or other. Mary sat down for a moment, but it would not do; she was sure Louisa had found a better seat somewhere else, and she would go on till she overtook her. Persuasion, Chapter 10
Ignoring the petty jealousies of Mary for a minute, I want to talk about hedgerows.
Not all footpaths are bordered by hedgerows, but many of them are. Some footpaths will go through the middle of a field, but it’s easier to maintain them and to keep people out of the way if they’re going along the edge. Often along the edges of a field, a hedgerow will have been established to serve as a sort of living fence to keep livestock in.
Hedgerows are an old and economical way of building living fences to contain livestock, or in some cases to keep them out. The term “laying a hedgerow” means to partially cut the trunks of woody plants like privet or dogwood or holly, or anything that would form a hedge, in a way that they will lay down, so that they’re laying diagonally against one another in a row, and they’ll grow in this thick diagonal upward slant.
As that cut heals and the plants continue to grow, they create a relatively thick and sturdy living fence that will eventually provide shelter for other plants that will begin growing there, as well as wildlife.
Hedgelaying, or the art of making a hedgerow, has a bunch of different ways to do it, a bunch of different styles. Those have developed independently in different parts of the country over the centuries. Those styles dictate everything from what types of plants to use to the exact method of physically laying the hedge or arranging the plants. Many of those styles are named after the particular area in the country where they’ve developed. You have things like Derbyshire style and Midland style, things like that.
Today, hedgerows are considered a natural resource, and they’re a protected resource in most areas of the UK. It’s typically against the law for anyone, even the property owner, to remove a hedgerow older than 30 years old without the approval of the local council.
There’s an interesting way of figuring out how old a hedgerow is. It’s called Hooper’s Rule. This is actually the official way used by some governing authorities. That is, you go along for 30 yards of the row, and you count the number of different woody species, so things like privet or dogwood or holly. You count the number of different species you find and you multiply that by 110, and that tells you the number of years old the hedgerow is, within plus or minus a century or so. It’s an interesting way that has been developed to figure out how old a hedgerow is.
It’s in and around these living fences that Captain Wentworth and Louisa have their conversation about the importance of a firm mind, which will come back again and again as the theme of the novel. Is it better to be persuadable, or is it better to have a firm mind and never change your mind about a particular topic?
Since hedgerows are so thick and often quite tall, it’s understandable that Anne could be sitting quite hidden on the other side of one while the others, Captain Wentworth and Louisa, are on the far side speaking about this topic.
Gates and Stiles
As we wind up our walk and our discussion here, we come to another set of fixtures of the British footpath, gates and stiles, and let’s hear a clip about those.
This long meadow bordered a lane, which their footpath, at the end of it was to cross, and when the party had all reached the gate of exit, the carriage advancing in the same direction, which had been some time heard, was just coming up, and proved to be Admiral Croft’s gig. He and his wife had taken their intended drive, and were returning home. Upon hearing how long a walk the young people had engaged in, they kindly offered a seat to any lady who might be particularly tired; it would save her a full mile, and they were going through Uppercross. The invitation was general, and generally declined. The Miss Musgroves were not at all tired, and Mary was either offended, by not being asked before any of the others, or what Louisa called the Elliot pride could not endure to make a third in a one horse chaise.
The walking party had crossed the lane, and were surmounting an opposite stile, and the Admiral was putting his horse in motion again, when Captain Wentworth cleared the hedge in a moment to say something to his sister. Persuasion, Chapter 10
Such gallant action by Captain Wentworth here.
If a landowner puts up a fence, or a hedgerow or wall around their property that intersects a footpath, the footpath has to remain publicly accessible. A gate will have to be put up to accommodate people.
Those gates come in various forms depending on the age of the structure and the area and the disposition of the person who has to maintain the path. They’re usually designed to make it fairly easy for a person to get through, but difficult or impossible for livestock to get through.
Since the people traveling the footpaths can’t always be trusted to close gates behind them, things like self-closing kissing gates are often used. In other places, you might find a set of steps called a stile that are made of either wood or stone that go halfway up the fence or hedge, and then another set on the opposite side leading back down.
Someone using the footpath will climb up the closest set of steps, swing their leg over the fence and onto the other set, and then climb back down the other side, perhaps very quickly, as Captain Wentworth did, or taking their time if they’re more careful or wearing a dress.
You can see this in the US as well if you walk along the Appalachian Trail on the East Coast, which sometimes crosses private land and will have sometimes sets of stiles that will help you get over private fences and across private land.
If you pay attention to the narration here, you’ll see that the party goes through the gate, crosses a lane, and then climbs a stile leading into another field as Captain Wentworth is busy speaking with his sister. Visualize that.
Conclusion
That wraps up this episode of My Cousin Jane. As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help support us, please consider clicking the little donate button or subscribing to our newsletter. Either way, thanks so much for listening.
