The History Hedge

It was a typical Summer ‘21 lockdown afternoon: sunny and warm, a few clouds and an obvious weather ‘window’ for an outing.  By the time we got to Nonsuch Park it was overcast.  By the time we gave up and left, it was raining.  So, here is a very small blog on a very large topic.

Nonsuch Park, located in Surrey but conveniently close to the capital, is just teeming with history: Iron Age remains, Roman occupation (Stane Street now defines the Park’s north western boundary) and an entry in Domesday Book (the village of Codintone, later Cuddington), all predate the creation of the actual Park.

Life changed forever when Henry VIII rocked up, demolished Cuddington (including the manor house, great barn and 12th-century church) and commissioned the building of a Royal Palace with Park to match.  The Palace seems to have been a bit of a slow burn.  Henry died before it was finished (and the whole thing was pulled down again in the 1680s to be replaced later by a variety of strctures), but the Park had become a fixture and seems to have featured in every subsequent major event in English history.  Today, teetering on the border between Surrey and London, the remnants of the Park are on the English Heritage Parks and Gardens Register (Grade II), and include ancient woodland, extensive grasslands and a biodiverse range of flora and fauna.  The current early 19th century building (below) is listed grade II*. Epsom & Ewell History Explorer does a useful website (https://eehe.org.uk/?p=25296) or try https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/woods/warren-farm/

And Terroir?  We just went to look at a hedge. 

We first noticed this hedge when walking the London Loop between Banstead and Ewell, via Nonsuch Park.   After leaving Banstead Downs, London loopers skirt Cuddington Golf Course on quiet suburban roads, and take in a short section on the busier A232 Cheam Road, before turning back into residential side roads to cross the London Brighton and South Coast Railway line to access Nonsuch Park.

It was the A232 section which caught our attention.  The road is bordered on both sides by substantial hedges which separate and protect quiet, suburban, service roads from the bustling ‘A’ road.  These hedges have the ‘feel’ of old country hedgerows – until you stumble over an ornamental cherry or a Norway maple.  So what’s going on?

Both on the ground and on the map, the A232 south of the railway line, looks suspiciously modern.  It forms an unnatural, sweeping, semicircle and is ornamented by an ambiguous roundabout at the fullness of the arc.  It feels like either a low key bypass or an over engineered suburban road, constructed as part of a 20th century residential estate. 

As it turns out that we were right, about 400 years out (with the exception of the roundabout, of course).  It seems that James I (first Stuart king of England from 1603 to 1625) extended the Park well beyond its Tudor boundaries, such that Stane Street divided the park into two - the Great Park to the north west and the Little Park to the south east.  “Originally the road from Ewell to Cheam had run across the Little Park, but this was diverted around its southern boundary, which is why the present Cheam Road (the A232) describes a long curve. This was the only part of the park pale that was laid out from fresh, instead of following an existing property boundary.” (https://eehe.org.uk/?p=25296)

We couldn’t find 17th century map evidence but this extract from an 1896 edition of the Ordnance Survey, clearly supports the 17th century ‘bypass’ theory.

We were right about the 20th century housing estate, though. This 1953 edition Ordnance Survey extract illustrates both the 1930s new build, the roundabout and a section of substantial road widening.

Both maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland' https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

So back to the hedges themselves. They are massive and overgrown but the number of different species attests to their age and the species mix is perfectly appropriate to their lowland, clay soil location. The hedge on the south side of the road appears thicker and more substantial, while the one on the north appears to have suffered more disturbance, is thinner and gappier.

Our attention was caught first by the preponderance of elms, which was a delight. Elms sucker easily along a hedgerow, but if allowed to grow too big, the larger diameter trunks provide a breeding ground for the elm bark beetle, and subsequent death of the elm via the fungus (which the beetles carry) blocking their vascular system which transports water throughout the tree. Coppicing and hedge trimming keeps elms below the critical size and allows the species - and its gene pool - to survive. There was plenty of healthy, vigorous ash, too, although Surrey is heavily impacted by ash dieback and this situation may change fairly rapidly.

Scattered along the length of hedgerow, we also found sycamore, field maple, horse chestnut, yew, evergreen oak, hazel, blackthorn, hawthorn and elder.

Elm - the good and the bad

Field maple, sycamore, ash and hazel

The overall effect

But how are the mighty fallen. The housing construction, and the number of new side roads, must have punched holes in this hedgerow bastion and someone saw fit to plant ‘ornamental trees’ (as if these natives weren’t ornamental enough) to ‘beautify’ the urban area. We found cherry, ornamental crab apples, limes, Norway maples, a walnut, horse chestnuts we couldn’t identify, and an acacia to name but a few, all in various stages of growth, some singly, some in clumps, some even attempting to fill hedgerow gaps, particularly in the thinner northern hedgerow.

To be honest, we found the effect bizarre and unattractive, accentuating and exposing the less attractive elements of the urban area, and totally destroying the beauty and history of the, admittedly overgrown, hedgerows. If the new planting had been well designed, well executed and well maintained, enhancement of this section of the urban area might have been acheived. But these areas seem inconsistent, uncordinated, unmaintained, unplanned and, in terms of creating a decent bit of townscape, incomprehensible and sad. I hesitate to make a joke of it, but it did seem, literally, beyond the pale.