The Breckland Pine Rows - Norfolk's Biodiversity

There are a few contemporary observations which give some clues to the chronology of
abandonment. In 1908, W.G.Clarke strongly implies that most of the pine hedges were
still being regularly managed. ‘These hedges are made of ordinary trees kept stunted by
constant trimming’. The only exceptions he seems to note are ‘many of the lines of fir
trees now bordering plantations were originally hedges, but have ceased to be trimmed’
(Clarke 1908, 563-4). As late as 1925 he implied that many were still being regularly cut,
noting how pines were ‘still the characteristic tree of the district, planted either in rows
known as ‘belts’, or artificially dwarfed as hedges’ (Clarke 1925, 17). A photograph by
Clarke in the Norfolk Record Office, dated 1923, shows an example of a managed hedge
in Ickburgh (Figure 10). By the 1930s, however, Butcher implies that many had been
abandoned, describing how ‘the rows of trees are in all stages of development and
degeneration: there are some very fine hedges along the Barton Mills-Elveden road and
some very neglected ones around Cavenham and Icklingham which no longer fulfill their
primary purpose’ (Butcher 1941, 353).
There is, however, abundant evidence that a significant proportion of the rows had been
allowed to grow out long before this. A number of photographs showing storm damage
on the Didlington estate, taken around 1900, show what appear to be tumbled lines of
pine trees (Figure 10). More importantly, a significant number of the rows are shown as
lines of conifers on the First Edition Ordnance Survey 6” maps from the 1880s. The
surveyors were instructed only to show mature trees, well beyond the sapling stage, thus
indicating that the management of the rows in question must have been abandoned many
years before (Figure 11). Their distribution is broadly similar to that displayed today by
the surviving pine rows as a whole within Breckland (Figure 12).
Figure 10. Didlington, Norfolk. A photograph from c.1900 showing what may
be a pine row brought down by a gale (NRO MC 84/133, PH7).