Hedgerow: from fence and line to English landscape

Over the summer we cycled through the De Veluwe National Park in the Netherlands. My bike broke towards the end of the ride, and as I was walking it back to the shop in Otterlo I spotted this sunflower sculpture rising above someone’s hedgerow. The word itself joins Old English hecg (‘hedge, enclosure’) and ræw (‘line, succession’). Behind it lies a thousand years of European field systems, from Bronze Age banks and Saxon charters to medieval quicksets and the Enclosure Acts.