The team at Forest for Cornwall are celebrating an incredible five years of the project. So far over 1.6 million trees have been planted in 971 projects across Cornwall, with...
James Richards
Some Cornish Hedges are over 3,500 yrs old! Making them 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.
Culturally and environmentally important, Cornish Hedges need protection and management to thrive. Spanning 30,000 miles, they form Cornwall’s largest semi-natural habitat.
Despite their importance, there is a significant gap in evidence at scale to fully capture the contributions of Cornish Hedges to ecosystem services and natural capital value.
| Section 01: Hartland Cornish Hedges in Hartland are typically made of dark sandstone or killas, in a horizontal style. Some have an overhanging line of stones (outriders) designed to add additional livestock proofing. | Section 02: Pentire Point to Widemouth Cornish Hedges here are treeless, windswept, and crooked, built with tightly packed diagonal slate—“curzy way”—reflecting local quarries and skilled masonry traditions. | Section 03: Camel Estuary Cornish Hedges, made of local slate, enclose many of the fields. In exposed sections, these hedges show a distinctive herringbone pattern. | Section 04: Carnewas to Stepper Point Many slate Cornish Hedges show a ‘Jack and Jenny’ herringbone pattern. Coastal hedges feature tamarisk tops and sea-worn stones, offering shelter from salty winds. |
| Section 05: St Agnes The Cornish Hedges that criss-cross the land are mainly made of rubble stone from local killas. They include unweathered, mineral-rich mine spoil, creating a valuable habitat for native plants and animals. | Section 06: Godrevy to Portreath Low stone Cornish Hedges are covered by rough vegetation mixed with occasional wind sculpted blackthorn and hawthorn. | Section 07: West Penwith The north coast features small, irregular pasture fields bordered by prehistoric granite Cornish Hedges. Large “grounders” form bases, topped with weathered stone and thorny vegetation. | Section 08: South Coast Western Cornish Hedges here are typically made of serpentine, blue elven, gabbro, or granite, in a random fill style with edgers. Beach pebbles can also be a feature, as well as stone outriders against the coastal fringes. |
| Section 09: South Coast Central Cornish Hedges form a timeless framework in a changing landscape. Some reveal bare stone, others support trees, enclosing medieval small to medium irregular agricultural fields. | Section 10: South Coast Eastern The narrow lane network connecting the farms with small hamlets are enclosed by high Cornish hedges of slate. They are well vegetated and give the appearance of grassy banks. | Section 11: Rame Head The Cornish Hedges here are low and covered in rough vegetation with occasional windswept scrubby trees and bushes. | Section 12: Bodmin Moor Cornish Hedges here use moorland granite. Higher up, they’re bare with sparse turf or hawthorn; lower down, dense with Beech, Oak, Hazel, and protective corn ditches. |
• Carbon storage • Water management • Improved air quality • Soil retention • Evaporation
• Wildlife pathways connecting wildlife rich habitats • Pollination services for crops • Natural pest control • Wildlife food and refuge • Seed bank • Improving water quality
• Shelter • Shade • Livestock management • Forage • Barrier to spray drift
• Channelling flood water • Reducing soil loss • Helping to reduce flood risk • Retention of flood water • Improving resilience to climate change
Cornish hedges define and frame the landscape. The fields that they enclose create the patterns of our everyday movement through the footpaths and lanes of Cornwall and contribute to the local character and distinctiveness of an area.
Hedges preserve and showcase a traditional rural craft. They can preserve artefacts and walling from buildings and features long gone. They also demonstrate how the land was used and accessed in the past.
Our Primary Purpose is to conserve and enhance Natural Beauty.
Our priority is to lead and support projects which deliver under these four key categories.
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Traditional crafts and local economy. A skilled hedger can build a hedge that lasts for hundreds of years with minimal maintenance. However, the art of Cornish hedging is endangered. The Heritage Crafts Association has placed it on the Red List due to the declining number of trained hedgers.
Regions of Cornwall have their own traditional hedge facing styles, based on the local geology, which is often granite or slate, as well as the pattern in which stones are laid. Cornish Hedges greatly enhance the landscape character and sense of place in each of the 12 Sections of the National Landscape.
Supporting biodiversity by connecting and providing habitats for numerous flora and fauna, the Cornish Hedge is a vital network of wildlife corridors. They form the largest semi-natural habitat in Cornwall By creating new, gapping up or restoring ghost hedges, it increases biodiversity and gives nature a home.
Cornish Hedges are a distinctive feature of our Cornish landscape, offering a wealth of ecosystem services when well-maintained. These ancient field boundaries are crucial for creating a nature-rich environment that is resilient to flooding and adaptable to future climate changes.
Cornish Hedges form an intricate network of tiny, irregular fields, consistent with medieval and prehistoric field patterns, with many Cornish Hedges built in ancient times.
Some have stone artefacts such as querns, cupstones, granite troughs, or early Christian crosses built into their structure.
The Cornish hedge is unique in providing a significant number of critical ecosystem functions. They are man-made wildlife refuges, home to a wide array of plant and animal life. Woody thorns and flowering perennials, and important endemic annuals like Western Ramping Fumitory are relics of the pre-farmed landscape and provide a year-round buffet of nectar and pollen. The myriad of insects that they shelter have essential roles in on-farm pest control and pollination. The hedges provide nest sites for all kinds of small mammals and reptiles and nesting sites for many birds. They are the lifeblood of Cornwall’s ecological network, linking important areas of semi-natural habitat and providing key corridors along which species such as hedgehog and bats will navigate. In other places, where semi-natural habitat has declined, they are the last refuges for wildlife.
Aside from supporting biodiversity, the Cornish hedge performs a key role in water management, buffering flows, filtering soil particles, slowing flows of water down valley sides, and alleviating flooding. They provide a windbreak to keep soil on the ground in winter storms. The woody top on most Cornish hedges has as much, if not more, potential to sequester and store carbon than any ordinary shrub hedge. The Cornish hedge is the Cornish landscape’s key attraction, providing a breath-taking aesthetic, much loved by tourists, and cherished by Cornwall’s communities. The Cornish hedge is unique in the scale and breadth of public goods and services it provides, although they remain unassessed and unquantified.
This natural system of the Cornish hedge relies on maintaining the moisture of the earth core. The hedge needs to be correctly built, using subsoil or similar clay-shale “rab” for its core. The correct laying of the stone and proper curve or “batter” shed rainfall, allowing just the right amount to seep into the hedge. The low fertility of the subsoil core and the tightness of the well-built stones resist invasion by rank weeds, which would otherwise destroy the hedge’s balanced ecology.
Cornish Hedges are a distinctive feature of our Cornish landscape, offering a wealth of ecosystem services when well-maintained. These ancient field boundaries are crucial for creating a nature-rich environment that is resilient to flooding and adaptable to future climate changes. Since 1995 we have lost more than 150 miles of Cornish Hedge, our hedges, along with nature, are in decline.
The Challenge
Despite their importance, there is a significant gap in evidence at the catchment and landscape scale to fully capture the contributions of Cornish Hedges to:
Surface Water management: Improving water quality by filtering pollutants and providing buffers against natural hazards like flooding.
Climate mitigation and soils: Enhancing soil health and carbon sequestration.
Nature Recovery: Supporting biodiversity by connecting and providing habitats for numerous flora and fauna.
This lack of data hinders our ability to accurately quantify the economic benefits to the landscape, climate change and local communities of constructing and restoring these traditional field boundaries.
Our current management plan commits us to capture the Cornish Hedge contribution to specific services and thus accurately describe their economic value in our landscape.
If evidence can be collated to demonstrate the importance of Cornish Hedges and their ecosystem value, new policies and objectives can be developed to inform the new management plan, recognising local distinctiveness and listing them as a special quality within each of our sections.
This would give Cornish Hedges the highest protection as a characteristic underpinning the Cornwall National Landscape designation.