Old single-species hedges are usually hawthorn or blackthorn: prickly, dense, stockproof. This one, beside the footpath, is almost pure hazel, planted along a 200‑yard boundary embankment of rocks cleared from the field, long ago. More than a hundred multi‑stemmed trees, regularly spaced with gaps wide enough for a flock of sheep to wander through. A ribbon of lemon yellow and gold autumn foliage, flickering in the late afternoon sunlight.
When I reach the end of the pasture, I turn uphill, then down, under a tunnel of overhanging branches, into the shelter of a sunken lane that I haven’t explored before; a holloway worn by centuries of scuffing boots, hooves and cartwheels. The air, heavy with the sweet aroma of fungal decay, is still chilled from last night’s frost. It’s quiet, peaceful, just the distant “chacking” of a flock of jackdaws, the rustle of falling leaves, rippling water over the ford at the bottom of the hill. No human noise. Timeless. It feels like a portal into the past.
Ahead, across Waskerley Beck, I can see mellow stone walls of Low Doctor Pasture Farm catching the last rays of the setting sun, and wonder about the lives of the family who built the farmhouse, 300 years ago. Dusk is closing in: about now, they would have lit candles and oil lamps, banked up the fire with logs for another long, cold night ahead. Winter must have seemed daunting.
The day is fading fast as I retrace my steps, pausing to look at the hazel hedge in a new light. The trees are old coppiced stools that would have been a living, renewable fuel source for the long months. Hazel had countless uses around the farm, but it also burns well. In 1664, John Evelyn in his Sylva, a landmark treatise on forestry, extolled the virtues of its coppiced timber for “poles, spars, hoops, forks, angling‑rods, faggots, cudgels, coals, and springs to catch birds”.
Cold wind tugs at the last leaves on the hazel twigs, where catkins are already forming. Spring seems a distant prospect in these shortening days. Shivering, shoulders hunched, quickening my pace, I head for home, where warmth comes at the flick of a switch.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
