Farming in Britain has a history which extends back through time for up to seven thousand years, and we can be sure that fields of one kind or another must have a similarly impressive antiquity. but how old are hedgerows? Until recently such a question would have seemed unanswerable, but during the 1980s morsels of evidence have come to light which push the proven antiquity of hedgerows back into roman times and beyond. We have not been alone in imagining that many Iron Age countrysides where patterned by a criss-cross tracery of hedges. At the same time, such a perception of ancient landscapes seemed virtually incapable of proof.

If we look at existing countrysides -- or at least those that are still largely unspoilt -- we see that in most lowland areas, where the rocks tend to be soft clays, sandstones or chalk or where the older geological strata are masked by thick sediments or glacial boulder clay, hedgerows are favoured as field boundaries. In the uplands, in contrast, tougher rocks are usually easily obtained, while exposure, thin soils or waterlogging militate against the vigorous growth of suitable trees and shrubs; in such places drystone walls are favoured. Even allowing for the factors of climatic change it is fairly safe to assume that similar distinctions between the hedged fields of the lowlands and the walled enclosures of the uplands existed in ancient times, even though most surviving field walls in Yorkshire and Northumberland and , perhaps, elsewhere, seem to be post-medieval in age.