Dear Othello.
It nice to see someone taking a interest in hurdle making.
In a quiet graveyard in the east of the country there is a gravestone and on this gravestone it simply says ‘ Here lays a Hurdle Maker’ To me, this is powerfully symbolic. Hurdle Makers were held in the rural districts with such high regard that they were virtually on an equal par with the shepherd who had awesome regard from everyone in the district, some would say, more than the local vicar.
Historically, hurdles were used for the ‘ folding’ ( fencing in) of sheep. We have to go back centuries to paint the picture........this will all make sense in a minute, trust me.
The countryside as we know it today with all of the hedges and square fields is relatively new to our countryside. We have all heard of the ‘ prairie fields’ in the US, how vast they are and you can see for miles upon miles. Well, this was how England was in the middle ages. This form of land management was called ‘The Open Field System’.
We had no hedges, they came later, under what is known as ‘The Enclosure Movement’ when the whole of the countryside, which was mostly ‘common land’ which meant that it belong to the commoners, was carved up and given to the powerful Lords of the manor ( more than likely some of your ancestors were made homeless at this point). Farming practises change dramatically we were a corn growing country, which was highly labour intensive. The black death swept throughout the country and wiped out half of the population. With no one left to manage the land the Lords and the markets dictated that we should be farming sheep, not for there meat but for their wool. It must be remembered, that this country’s wealth is based on the wool export trade which started in the middle ages. Even some of the most powerful families in the country today are only so because of the wealth there ancestors made in the era of the wool trade an example people being the Spencer family- Lady Diana’s clan.
So, with so many sheep in the country and no hedges. How where they going to keep them in. During the day, these massive sheep flocks roamed the down lands and at night they were brought down onto the arable land. The only fertiliser we had in those days was natural fertiliser and this came from the sheep as they grazed the arable land. To keep the sheep flocks penned in ( folding) they used wattle hurdles which are robust and light to transport. They were used at lambing time to be a lambing fold, a temporary farm yard if you like.
If it wasn’t for the humble hurdle that was keeping all oh theses sheep under control, this country wouldn’t of had the wealth it accumulated to go on and build the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.
The hurdle is nothing new, the oldest one ever found in this country is 7,000 years old!
Hurdle making is unarguably, the supreme of all woodland skills. It was so important that it was look upon as helping in the war effort and you were exempted from going to war as many thousands of hurdles were used as stretchers, especially in the evacuation of Dunkirk and many of our woodland here in Dorset produced hurdles for this purpose.
If you can make a hurdle, you will be able to tackle any other woodland craft as nothing is so complicated as hurdle making and once you have been able to make your first hurdle you will know exactly what achievement is all about. One of the most exceptional points about hurdle making is the fact that you can walk into a wood and cut all of your material, trim it, split it and produce a functional object with just one billhook, nothing else.
It is a brutal way to earn a living at times and it isn’t for the faint hearted, but it can, and is taught. It will take you two days to learn and a life time to get it right! I guarantee you that, once you have made your first hurdle you will be addicted, as the woodland way of life gets into your blood and it will change your life profoundly, and that I promise you.
The woodlands are in all of us, it just takes time for some of
us to realise it.
Hope that helps, and next time I will write a long reply.
Jack.
If you like more detail on the woodlands please click on our Education page and then click on woodland clues, it may be of interest to you.
