Brief for consideration

Context

Cornish hedges are among Cornwall’s most distinctive cultural and historic assets. Dating back over 3,500 yrs old, they represent one of the oldest human-made structures still used for their original purpose. As old as the Pyramids, neither a hedgerow or a dry-stone wall, they are unique and mainly found in Cornwall. Spanning 30,000 miles, they form Cornwall’s largest semi-natural habitat and despite their importance, there is a significant gap in evidence to fully capture the contributions of Cornish hedges to ecosystem services and natural capital value.

Cornish hedges are fundamental to Cornwall’s historic landscape character, local distinctiveness, and sense of place. They embody generations of traditional land management, craftsmanship, language, customs, and community identity.

While the environmental benefits of Cornish hedges are increasingly recognised through biodiversity, carbon, and natural flood management functions, their contribution to heritage, wellbeing, community cohesion, cultural identity, and social value has not been systematically evidenced or valued.

Developing a robust valuation of these benefits will help demonstrate the full public value of Cornish hedges and support their inclusion within future green finance mechanisms, environmental land management schemes, heritage investment programmes, and policy development.

This work builds on valuing methodology created for biodiversity, carbon (storage and sequestration) and natural flood management (2026).