Memories of an ex-Launton boy from Launton Lines Issue 290 January & February 2025

This month the ex-Launton boy considers the California wildfires which triggers memories of the floods in Launton from his childhood.

First of all, may I wish everyone in Launton a belated Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year, and let’s hope it is better than the last one.

I’ve been thinking about the enormous forest fires in California and the absolute devastation caused by them to both property and life, including the natural wildlife in the area.

When I was growing up in Launton, I would observe people like my Uncle Bernard carrying out proper hedge-laying, an almost dead art in the countryside where hedges are now hacked in an ugly fashion by modern day agricultural machinery. As a consequence, gone is the density of the hedgerows which previously formed a fantastic habitat for birds and other wild life, and insects. Now there are yawning gaps in hedgerows through which inquisitive animals can escape to freedom.

If you look carefully into hedgerows round the village, it will be possible to see, low down, examples of the art of hedge-laying, above which towers the ugly evidence of the work of the tractor-driven hedge cutter.

One of the common features of the work of the hedge layers was the disposal of unwanted trimmings, generally done in little bonfires on the verges at the roadside. They were kept small so they could be controlled, and so reduce the risk of starting an out-of-control fire.

I had a similar experience whilst serving in the army in the Corps of Royal Engineers when, building Anglo-German relations, we were repairing culverts in the Black Forest in Bavaria. We were constantly bothered by enormous horse flies whose bite was extremely painful for several days afterwards. To keep them at bay, we used to light little fires at the side of the forest tracks, deliberately burning damp material to create thick, acrid smoke. It did the trick in keeping the horse flies at bay, but it played havoc with our eyes and lungs.

The Californian fires are a prime example of the effects of climate change, but climate change is nothing new. OK, our hedgerows didn’t suffer extensive fires back when I was a kid, although places like the New Forest or Exmoor had a fire or few.

However, Launton was not untouched by climate change, as far back as my 1950’s childhood, and it related in part to hedgerows yet again. We had occasions when the rainfall being both heavy and prolonged fell on our fields where the water, instead of draining through the soil, ran off the surface instead. All fields were surrounded by hand-dug ditches which, although being mostly of clay and what had been deemed to be of sufficient size to carry the water run-off to the little streams that ultimately would flow, via the River Ray, into the Thames, turned out to not be quite sufficient, so heavy and prolonged the rainfall had been.

Walking along Station Road between the end of the village and the station, a stranger might have thought that Launton was an island in the middle of a massive lake, had it not been for the tops of hedgerows poking through the surface of the water.

I still retain the memory of one day, when my dad was a coach driver, when he pulled up outside our house in Station Road in the empty coach, taking his shoes and socks off and rolling his trouser legs up above his knees, to wade through the flood water in the road to reach our front door. I believe that was in the year of the Great Flood. Hedgerows played such an important part in our childhood of the 1950’s in particular, from picking blackberries in the season and rosehips from we made our own version of itching powder. And the hedges were interspersed with willow trees from which with our pocket knives we would cut our bows and arrows, and with our help and with our pocket knives, the girls would create comfortable camps in the hedgerows as we played out our children’s games. No X-Boxes for us.

And as I have previously written, there are those of us who took from hedgerows the very young shoots from the Hawthorn, and chewed them with sheer delight: we called it “Bread and Cheese”.

Sadly, in the interests of intensive farming, many hedgerows across the country have been ripped out, having an adverse effect on wildlife, both flora and fauna, and of course, the overall look of our landscapes. Save our hedgerows says I - and bring back hedge-laying.

Keep healthy and stay SAFE!

TonyJeacock, MInstRE | The ex-Launton Boy | February 2025