Somewhere near Creaton, Northamptonshire: this stand, and the one behind it, is on a former dairy farm. It is for standing under (or itching one's back) and it makes sense in summer and winter.
And a hedge, a few miles away from the stand. I will always associate perfectly cut hedges with Northamptonshire. Evidence would seem to suggest that scissors have been used, though the cutter is simply a skilled machinist, with better equipment, and certainly a sharper blade than that used on the hedge below, at Brixworth. A 'flailed' hedge done with neither skill nor sharpness.
In her recent tv series about wild flowers Sarah Raven focussed on this part of Northamptonshire as having destroyed its hedges with more abandon than any other county. We know that after WW2 the government paid for farmers to explode, uproot and burn hedges in the name of greater yields, and that this had a horrible effect on wildlife and wild flowers. But it can be said that the hedges that were left after the great flattening are at least exquisitely maintained. On the whole.
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Well done ! Perfectly illustrated - and if I can ever find the driver of the hedge mauler he will be castrated,euphemistically speaking of course..
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