Have you ever looked at the hedges in St Leonard’s?

If the Tardis carried you back to St Leonard’s in the eighteenth century or earlier, the roads of our neighbourhood would be lined with hedges, to protect the local farmers’ livestock from travellers, and vice versa.  So our oldest roads, Wonford Road, Heavitree Road, Magdalen Road, Topsham Road and Matford Lane would have been muddy tracks with a hedgerow and stone walls on each side, interspersed with gates and farm buildings.  Those hedges would have been like many in rural Devon, a dense barrier of native trees and shrubs, tended by regular cutting and periodic hedge-laying, with hand-tools, of course.  There is a modern example of hedge-laying at the further end of Bromhams Farm football field.
 

At the junction of Matford Lane and Wonford Road the hedge is a survivor from the old hedgebank, hidden behind the scrub.

The nineteenth century saw parts of these roads being developed for houses, with the loss of most of the ancient hedges, though boundaries followed the old lines.  But the houses that were built needed to mark their boundaries, and new hedges were planted.  Unfortunately, it is hard to date when local hedges were planted, but some have been with us for a century or more.  (In rural areas, there are rules of thumb for estimating the age of a hedgerow, based on the number of species of tree in a given length, but those rules don’t work in towns and cities.)

The process has continued to the present day, with many more recent household boundaries marked by hedges on their own, or with walls or fences.  It seems strange, since a hedge demands more maintenance than a fence or wall does, but hedges give us a link back to the rural past, and have many other benefits as well. 

A section of wall with hedge on top (Wonford Road)

So let’s look at some of the hedges that can be seen around St Leonard’s.  We have a few examples of a countryside hedgebank in an urban setting, that is, an earth bank planted with trees like hawthorn, with their trunks laid to be almost horizontal.  Much more common in the city are hedges on top of stone or brick walls, so that the boundary is marked in a permanent way, but it looks as if the boundary is a part of the garden, a living backdrop for all the flowers and shrubs.  And we have hedges which grow alongside fences and railings, serving the same aesthetic purpose.  If you are playing I-Spy, give yourself 10 points for a hedge with a wall, fence or railings, 25 points for a hedge with two other barriers, and 100 points for four or more.

Now look more closely, and you will see how every hedge displays some individuality.  First, what kind of tree has been planted?  Is there one species, or two, or more?  Are they mixed in a systematic way?  When I was researching this, I came across a hedge that is being repaired where the side facing the road has been planted with a row of one species of tree, and the side facing the garden with a second.  A mixture may also be the result of new species colonising the hedge, as happens on farms, and provides the basis for estimating the age of the hedge.  Privet is a popular choice of tree, with laurel and holly as alternative evergreens.  There are several beech hedges, liked because the leaves turn brown in the autumn and are only shed in the spring.  There’s a fine example at County Hall.  One or two gardens have more exotic hedges, using flowering shrubs such as roses (10 points for one of these).  And, yes, we have some hedges of the fast-growing, notorious, and very thirsty, Leyland Cypress.  

Beech hedge at County Hall

Second, how is the hedge tended?  Is it cared for?  After two or three years of neglect, the hedgerow trees start to look less like a hedge and more like a wilderness.  If it is cared for, then has it been trimmed with geometrical precision to look like a wall?  Or does it have some curving shape or irregularity?  Does the hedge match the hedges on either side?  Or have different owners imposed individual styles on theirs?  You’ll find high hedges and low hedges along local streets, creating an interesting urban landscape.  Maybe that is what inspired an estate agent to advertise with the line: "Set amidst the grand avenues of Exeter's premier residential district".

Then, is it really a hedge, or a hedge-like boundary?  In suburban gardens many of us prefer variety to monotony, so mark the boundary with several shrubs or small trees, cut to the rough shape of a hedge, but really forming a harmonious backdrop to the planting of the garden.  Look out for front gardens which are marked by a row of trimmed shrubs of assorted species.  When I came to live in this area, an older resident apologised to me for the shape of one of his front garden shrubs, which he had trimmed into the shape of a cube.  But instead of having edges which were horizontal and vertical, it leaned at a marked angle.  He said that, twenty years on, it was still recovering from the effects of the 1962-63 winter, when the weight of snow had bowed the main trunk. 

Hedges can divide gardens into rooms, as happens in many country houses.  On a smaller scale, car parks are often hidden behind hedges, as happens on the St Luke’s campus.  Not only do the trees screen the vehicles, but they help reduce pollution.   
 

A low hedge to mark the boundary of a car park, County Hall

There are hedges on the hospital site for the same reason.  The offices next to the Crown Court have a low hedge for another reason; it protects the wall from careless parking.  An extension to the concept of hedges marking rooms is to create windows and doors (25 points for finding one).  One example of the latter is at County Hall, and there are others on private houses in St Leonard’s; look out for them.

A doorway or arch through a hedge (County Hall/Matford Avenue)

Besides their aesthetic interest, hedges are havens for wildlife.  Birds nest in our hedges, so if you have a hedge, please don’t cut it when there are likely to be nesting birds hidden in the greenery.  They provide corridors around the neighbourhood for a variety of animals, hedgehogs, squirrels, foxes and rodents.  Frogs, toads and newts can be found in them, along with the occasional snake or slowworm.  Butterflies feed on the hedges, and lay their eggs on some species.

Last, but not least, when we are looking for trimmed hedges and bushes, there are a few examples of topiary in the front gardens of the neighbourhood.  One is in Magdalen Road.  Go and find it!

The (almost) last word

Have you ever noticed?

The title for this, my final article, is a little different.  Instead of asking if you have ever looked at things, I want to bring together a few oddments that didn’t fit into the categories of the set of articles.

Trees:  Although there are many fine trees in St Leonard’s, we should praise the city council for the beautiful line of maples in Denmark Road by the swimming pool.  At the other end of the neighbourhood in Wonford Road there is a monkey puzzle which is hemmed in by other tall trees, and another can be seen across the river near the allotments.  The Veitch nurseries were in Gras Lawn, and they popularised monkey puzzle trees for rich Victorian land-owners (including the avenue at Bicton College). 

Stones:  In the article that I wrote for the last issue (Nov-Dec 2012) I asked about the stones which face the terrace in Barnfield Road and the front walls of the houses.  Thanks to an interested reader, I discovered that they are part of our city’s history, as these stones came from the second Exe Bridge.  This was built in 1778 and was demolished in 1903.  The building firm of Woodmans built the terrace, and bought the stonework when the bridge was taken down to make way for one which was flat enough for trams to use. 

In an earlier article, I wrote about the granite kerbstones and setts at the edge of some roads, as well as the carved markings in some of them.  You can deduce when some of our local roads were developed by looking at the kerbstones.  The newest roads have concrete kerbstones; older ones have narrow stones, and some of the oldest ones have quite wide stone kerbs.  Even when the kerbs have been lifted and relaid, the stonework remains.  In the developments that date from between the wars, there are stone setts in the road opposite the shared drives.  The craftsmen who laid the kerbs took pride in shaping stones into curves at junctions and bends - concrete kerbs are less imaginative.  I have also noticed unusual dropped kerbstones in Spicer Road and Rivermead Road at house entrances which have been cut with grooves to give better traction.  And in the parts of the gutters of Lyndhurst Road and Fairpark Road, there are slates instead of the local granite.

A different kind of stone is to be found on a few street corners.  These are the conical stones built into the corner of a wall to protest that corner from cartwheels.  If a wheel came too close, the hard, shaped stone would force it away from the wall.  Look for one in Radnor Place.

House and other walls:  the terrace of houses at the southern end of Marlborough Road was originally called Queen’s Terrace.  There is a space on the wall where the name-plate used to be.  In Barnfield Road there is a house with a Jack in the Green; there are roses on the east side of the Lord Mamhead flats – just visible from the gateway.  And, don’t forget the demon which broods over the bottom of Holloway Street, the imposing number 3 on the wall over the toilets on the Quay and the date 1878 on the wall of the Antiques Centre on the Quay

There’s a lion in Manston Terrace (in a garden not on a wall) and a fan-tailed pigeon on a gatepost in West Grove Road, and a gate with spider and web in Baring Crescent.  Someone asked about the rabbit between the eagles on two houses in Wonford Road.  It turns out to be a recent addition, as it does not appear in the photograph in the Civic Society’s book about St Leonard’s.  There are two similar eagles on a pair of houses in Salutary Mount, Heavitree

Inscriptions Have you noticed that there are the names of the maker on some lamp-posts.  There are several which have the inscription “ …. Engineers, Exeter”

And in this month of the RSPB’s Great Garden Birdwatch: have you looked at …our fellow inhabitants?

I was glad when “Home Information Packs” ceased to be required by sellers of houses.  Not, I hasten to say, for political reasons, and only partially for financial reasons, but because the packs didn’t describe a home.  They were about the dwelling, the house, the flat, and not about the home. 

Now, suppose you were creating a real information pack about your home.  It could make an interesting story, as you interwove the story of your life and your family’s adventures with the way that it was affected by the place where you live.  What stories would you tell? 

A Home Information Pack really should mention the creatures that share our neighbourhood.  What would you include for your home? 

During last summer, I read the remarkable book, “Wildlife of a Garden” by Jennifer Owen.  For thirty years, she monitored the birds, animals, insects etc that shared her garden in Leicester.  The list went on and on.  She was a biologist, and had access to specialists who could identify what she found and collected.  The book reveals the range of creatures who share a suburban garden, many of which are easily overlooked. 

So instead of telling you what you might see, why not investigate for yourself, looking at birds, butterflies, moths, animals and insects.  The results will surprise you!

A second book from my recent reading list would make a good present for anyone interested in wildlife.  Stephen Moss’ “Wild Hares and Hummingbirds” is a diary of a year looking at the wildlife of a village in Somerset, seen through the eyes of one  of the BBC’s Springwatch producers

Thank you

Thank you to the many people who have commented on these articles.  I have included some of your comments in my pieces.  However, I refused to write one article.  Someone asked me to write “Have you ever looked at … eyesores in the neighbourhood?”

Meanwhile, I hope that some of the readers of the Neighbourhood News are going to look at their surroundings with fresh eyes.  (And perhaps, when you are visiting other parts of the city, or going further afield.)  Please let me know of anything in the future that you see which catches your interest.

In the St Leonard's Neighbourhood News for January-February 2013

postscript: As many readers will know, I returned from exile to write further columns for the Neighbourhood News.  These can be found in the blog.