British farmers have planted and tended hedgerows since at least 2500 BC, says Richard Negus in Engelsberg Ideas. Since then, they have played a vital role in providing food and protection not just to humans and their herds, but also to a staggering variety of bird, mammal and invertebrate species. Nevertheless, they were always a man-made construct – as much a part of farming as the tractor, seed drill or plough. Woodland shrubs planted in “tight-knit staggered rows” grow into linear, thorny belts. When these are coppiced and trimmed, they become the impenetrable hedges still used to retain and shelter livestock, protect crops from bitter winds, and delineate who owns what.

Since 1945, 50% of English hedgerows – covering around 118,000 miles – have disappeared from the landscape. In the push to end rationing after World War Two, farmers were ordered by the Ministry of Food to maximise production. For Whitehall technocrats, hedgerows were nothing but a “hindrance to crop production”, and any negative impact to wildlife was “brutally ignored” by the Labour government of Clement Attlee. “Humans came first, and English humans were hungry.” War machines and munitions were repurposed: in field corners, military explosives “splintered craggy elms and ancient oaks to shards”. The same bulldozers that had cleared barbed-wire emplacements in Normandy now “eradicated English ribbons of thorn, spindle and hazel”. The 1947 Agriculture Act quickly achieved its aim of boosting arable production: bread, flour and potatoes were removed from the ration book a year later; by 1954, rationing was history. Farming’s industrialisation, “so effective at ending post-war privation”, had proved equally successful at effacing the English hedgerow.

THE FARMHOUSE This Grade II listed, six-bedroom thatched farmhouse in Wiltshire has a half-acre garden designed by owner and award-winning landscape architect Michael Balston, says Daisy Dawnay in the FT. The main house retains 17th-century features including flagstones and stone mullioned windows, with an even older Tudor inglenook fireplace in the sitting room. The modern kitchen, with natural hardwood worktops and four-door Aga, connects to a separate utility and a larder. Outside, a more recent brick barn contains an open-plan ground floor, currently used to run a business, with two large guest suites upstairs. Pewsey station is a 10-minute drive, with trains to London in just under an hour. £1.85m. Click on the image above to see the listing.

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