"Hedgerows: Why Only Normandy?" Topic

Why are hedgerows (bocage) only found in Normandy. My understanding is that the bocage built up over the centuries, as each year farmers ploughing their fields would find new rocks.* They'd carry the rocks to the edges of the field, where they piled up into walls. Wind blew dirt in among the rocks, and eventually plants began to grow in the dirt. The result is a combination wall/hedge that's a very tough customer.

Why didn't this occur in other areas? Farmers everywhere find rocks in their fields. There's wind everywhere. Why the difference?

Possibilities that have occurred to me:

1) The Norman countryside is unusually rocky.
1a) In less-rocky areas, they use up all the rocks building wells, houses, and so forth.

2) Normandy is unusually windy, so the dirt got swept into the piles much more quickly.

Niether of these really makes sense to me.

*Fields really do "grow" rocks, because large particles rise to the top when suspended in small particles. You can do some interesting experiments with pebbles and sand in a jar. There was an article on this in Scientific American many years ago.

Bocage is mixed woodland although usually referred to with regard to the embanked hedgerows in Normandy:

There are still embanked hedgerows in the UK of 6/700+ years age and more.

the change from such hedges protecting small "fields" meant their removal as areas became more developed into less man-intensive farming and larger holdings.

The Normandy region was really just an area that had not, yet, undergone much in terms of agricultural changes i.e. the move to larger fields via the removal of the old, embanked hedgerows and replacement with more "modern" hedges or fencing that were not on a ditch/bank base but planted on to flat ground.

To the best of my knowledge the amount of "rocks" within the embankment is of no great significance: the strength of the "bocage hedgerows" came from the accumulation of the embankment with tightly packed root systems from the shrubs/trees along its length, those having become intensely impacted over the centuries – and that still typifies such hedges wherever you find them still in Europe. (you still have to either blow 'em, up or use a digger to hack through them)

We have some near us that are reportedly 900 years old, the bank being over 12 foot high in places alongside the road.

Slightly OT: Did you know that you can accurately judge the age of hedgerow by counting the number of species (of plant) within in it per X length?

Forgot to mention: pretty much whenever one discusses medieval and later (maybe right up to 1900 in many areas) hedges you should think of them as "bocage hedgerow", with ditch, bank and trees along the ridge (sometimes no ditch as it became filled in over time).

It helps explain incidents such as in the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403) where an army has difficulty negotiating a "hedge": you simply couldn't push through them as you can with "modern" hedges – the things were practically a solid wall.

Its a good example of how a traditional name remains in use (hedge) but the actual thing it describes is dramatically different from the original context (a flimsy hawthorn hedge versus a ruddy massive bank with 20+ species of tree roots in it)

There's lots of similar places, Brittany for one, and England. One thing a lot of people forget is that the American troops DID train in hedgerows in England before the invasion. Its just taking an empty field with two guys firing blanks at you, is a lot dfferent from a field with two MG34's dug into well placed dugouts.

I holiday in Devon (England) a lot in the area which was one of the main practice areas for D-day landing assaults – the cliffs bear the remains of concrete walls for bazooka pracice and there are a lot of mock fortifications etc. The hedgerows in the area are very very similar to bocage, they are quite different from other areas around England where people know them as cornish hedges.( I grew up in rural England and the hedges where I lived as a kid were just country hedges. The bases are rocks/walls which have been overgrown etc, the roads/lanes are worse than the stuff i have been through in France so it always struck me as odd that it was such a surprise. On talking to some US vets who were at the museum there once they said that they avoided the hedgerows in cornwall/devon as they were such a pain to get over and they weren't allowed to destroy them. Intelligence had failed to show the normandy hedges were practically identical so they only practiced in 'normal hedges' that had replaced the old ones in a lot of the farming areas except for by the roads etc.
It is my feeling that if they had known a lot of the issues could have been tackled in England.

On a side note anyone thinking it would be fairly easy to push through or drive through these babies are very wrong. In the name of research I have tried to push through quite a few, even just trying to get a 'firing position' quickly and it is very very difficult. As for Line of Sight through them even when 'up against them' well forget it – no wonder there are a lot of instances of vets saying that they could hear the enemy were on the other side but couldn't see them or get to them! Those guys who had to fight through them have my GREATEST respect believe me!

I can't seem to find the original paper on the web--it's from the 1980's, probably from Phys. Rev. Letters, and was titled "Why do the Brazil Nuts End Up on Top?". I would not be surprised if Scientific American picked up on it, too.

I did find the following, among MANY more:

link

link

link

link (with videos!) <-- this is the best, from a scientific point of view--it's actuall an online paper describing the research.

actually, it is an interesting question as if you expand it to include just northern France and southern England- it does seem like a localized phenomenon.

In New England you can't walk for more than a few feet in any woods without running into a stone wall built (ages ago) but we only date back a few hundred years here- not thousands.

There were, and still are, plenty of hedgerows in the East of the Netherlands.Years ago I did some research into a battle near what is now thge city of Hengelo, and came across the mention of a Dutch army being crushed by the army of the bisshop of Münster after it got cornered at a spot where two hedgerows met. These were of the Landweer variety, so doubled as defenive position, an earth bank with a tough hedge on top and a ditch at the bootom. You can still find sections of them.
But also the simple ones, consisting of annually pruned beech or oak would be very dense.

The true bocage known as les haies, was/is really limited to the base of the Contentin peninsula. Yes, other areas of Normandy have large hedgerow surrounded fields but these were similar to fields that one can find in the Home Counties and Midlands amongst others today.

I think there are several issues at hand, the Normans themselves blame the Napoleonic inheritence laws and what is probably the most realistic answer – weather/drainage.

Normandy is renowned for being one of the wettest places in France with some of the heaviest rainfall. The heavy clay soil becomes saturated very quickly. The hedgerows help soak up the water whilst the ditches on either side provide drainage for run-off.

Wind is a lesser problem but problem nevertheless. The winds can be very strong coming in off the Atlantic and La Manche is very exposed. There are often massive storms and the odd tornado. This would lead to erosion of the top soil over time without protective hedgerow.

Cheers
Mark

Thanks to all for your good info. I'm a bit surpised about the path of development in England, what with "The Enclosure Movement" being such a big deal. The texts on enclosures certainly give the impression that the fields were mostly open and undivided.

In any case, pulling down those hedgerows must have taken an immense amount of effort. What the heck did they do with all the rock, tree trunks, and so forth?

Marks comments on the winds and top soil erosion makes a lot of sense as in the SW of England where these bocage like hedges are found there are often strong winds off the ocean.

The enclosure system was more concerned with common grazing areas rather than established farmland that already neaded smaller areas because of the weather etc.

>[Bujinman]
>On talking to some US vets …
>said that they avoided the
>hedgerows in cornwall/devon
>as they were such a pain to
>get over and they weren't
>allowed to destroy them.
>Intelligence had failed to
>show the normandy hedges
>were practically identical …

Along the same lines, I know John Mosier, author of "The Blitzkrieg Myth", isn't taken seriously as many of his conclusions run counter to established expert opinion about WWII.

But in that book he made the point that the Allies should have anticipated getting bogged down in Normandy, because both Montgomery and Patton had been in that area of France in WWI and should have been familiar with not only the bocage hedgerows but also the sturdy stone buildings that made such excellent blockhouses.

Did he have a point or is that just Monday morning quarterbacking?

Cumbria is stuffed with Hedgerows a-la Bocage.
I used em to get an idea of spotting ranges for "Close" terrain for my rules. Surprising how little you can see in places like this.

donrice – I rather think that Monty and Patton were familiar with French territory far to the east – Flanders, not Normandy, in the case of Monty. Patton would have been familiar with the terrain around the Argonne – not Normandy. From what I've heard of critics opinions of Mr Mosier, if he describes it as "black" then take it as given it's white.

The Normandy region was really just an area that had not, yet, undergone much in terms of agricultural changes i.e. the move to larger fields via the removal of the old, embanked hedgerows and replacement with more "modern" hedges or fencing that were not on a ditch/bank base but planted on to flat ground.

It depended on the area within Normandy, and still does.

Close to the coast there were (and are) areas with very large open fields. Very few areas of bocage.

The country immediately astride the the Caen to Bayeaux road, the start line for Operation Epsom, was open country. But there were (and in some places still are) areas of tight bocage close around some villages. The country gets closer as you move south.

To the east of Caen, Goodwood, beyond and on to Falaise, the country is wide open and there is nothing that could really be described as bocage.

Then there's the proper bocage country I've stood in a footpath there completely unable to even get a glimpse of a tractor about thirty feet away.

As Derek has said the heavy bocage areas are sprinkled about. An amzing area is the valley around Villers Bocage it has a deep ravine and must have been a formidable obstical when trying to cross the river there. I go usually once a year and stay near to Villers or Grand camp Maisy near to Point du Hoc. Do some metal detecting and look for German positions I identfy from original aerial photos I collect.

Here is an interesting site for those over the pond who havnt seen Normandy
link

The countryside around my birth place is called "Bocage Bourbonnais" ( Bourbonnais is the former fief of the Dukes of Bourbon ). There was a lot of hedgerows before mainly because there was a lot of cattle. In the sixties, they destroyed the hedgerows (like in may other french areas) in order to create large fields for wheat. But there are still many large hedgerows.

Olivier

Bourbonnais in the center of France between Berry (Bourges) North, and Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand) South.

Olivier

There are ancient roads worn down by centuries of use to below ground level with high banked hedgerows on each side all over Europe. Many of our local ones in Derbyshire even have streams running down them.

They don't get remarked on much as mechanised WW2 armies haven't had to fight over them, although I expect the Romans cursed a bit about it as they slogged it out with the Brigandes.

Having grown up in Matlock (Derbyshire) I admit many a hedgerow has been the downfall of many a pair of shorts but they still aren't quite the formidable obstacle that the old cornish/devon and bocage area ones are – although some of the sunken lanes saw many a good game of soldiers – and we didn't know how close to reality we really were!

In my opinion, the hedgerows aided a defence that was based upon the underlying terrain. The hills, gullies, steep river valleys, swamps and marshes all played an important role in the battle for the bocage – as did the sparse road network.

Whether Monty et al should have prepared better for the bocage has come up as a thread before. I said there and say again, that the Allies didn't expect to fight in Normandy for any length of time and largely didn't expect there to be a problem that needed specialist training. They expected the main fight to be on the Seine.

Looking at the overall campaign whilst the Allies were bogged down Normandy (shame on them), err well they actually managed to largely keep to their overall campaign schedule and make it into Paris around D+90.

The losses incurred by the Gertmans in Normandy bled the German armies in the West to such an extent that Brittany and then all Northern France fell within about a month of the breakout.

If the bloodletting hadn't happened in Normandy it would have occurred elsewhere.

It's wrong to castigate the generals and planners of 1944. The lacklustre performance of the Panzer Lehr at Pont Herbert or 12th SS against the Canadians showed that the Germans hadn't mastered the art of attacking in the bocage either.

Cheers
Mark

We had bocage on my grandfather's farm here in Michigan. When I was a kid we would go out into the field after plowing and spend a weekend moving rocks off to the edges of the fields.

This must have been done for generations before because the borders were quite high. Nearly over the head of an eight year old any way.

Interesting responses; thanks everyone.

The main problem isn't so much the size of the hedges themselves but the sheer density of the field system and the patchwork of tiny, tiny fields. This was due to the ancient Norman traditions of inheritance, where a man's land was split equally between his sons, rather than all being given to the eldest sons. This resulted in denser and denser field systems and is also evident in areas of the UK that were also densely colonised by the Normans and their Fleming mercenaries – Devon, Pembrokeshire, the Gower and others.

I remember reading years ago that the hedgerows were not only to delineate the fields but also to serve as source of fresh game. The farmers would bend over small saplings so that trees would grow along the ground, giving shelter to rabbits from predators. It created a barrier that was almost impossible for anything larger to pass through.

I have seen occasional references to hedgerows elsewhere even including Russia but these were isolated bitsof terrain, nothing like the Normandy bocage.

Antenociti – you're referring to the Hooper Hedgerow Dating Hypothesis – count the number of woody species in a 30m stretch of hedge and you have the age of the hedge in centuries.

Plenty of good solid hedges left on Anglesey as well. Really evil things made out of hawthorn several metres across. I don't know what US hedges are like, but it's worth pointing out European hedges can be exceptionally spiny.

Round here we have something called 'clawdd' which is basically a hedge planted on a stone-faced embankment. That could be embarassing if trying to drive anything less than a tank through it since the stone wall isn't always visible…

Laying a hedge, as Triple000 says, does rejuventate and strengthen it, but I always thought it was more to keep the hedges stock-proof.

Rabbits don't prosper in close terrain – too much cover for pedators also. Which is why the rabbit population exploded after the Enclosure Acts.

Nothing to do with the question, I just thought I'd share :)

My rebuttal from "The Mammal Soiety"
"Rabbits have no legal protection in Britain and landowners are required to prevent them from damaging neighbours land. In the middle of the 19th century rabbit numbers began to increase dramatically until they became major agricultural pests. Their increase was due to the large scale planting of hedgerows (a result of years of enclosure acts) providing rabbits with shelter and opportunity to burrow in loosened soil; new agricultural technology increased cereal production giving rabbits an easily accessible food supply and large numbers of the rabbits' natural predators were killed by gamekeepers.."
The hedgerows in Normandy were a man-made barrier built over centuries. Had not modern agriculture taken over, they would probably still be getting bigger and thicker.
Sorry, just had to do it :)

It seems that a few years ago they had this huge rabbit population growth problem in Australia. They tried everything including infectious disease and the rabbits still bredm well, like rabbits. Apparently they even tried to build an electtric fence accross the whole continent. The rabbits simply burrowed under it.

Nothing to do with hedgerows but since Triple000 mentioned rabbits I jsut had to get that one in :-)