A few hours spent in the County Archives in Chester last Thursday, a couple of estate maps to look at - including a 1735 'Enclosures Map' and associated documents on parchment.
The neighbouring land to the south has a collection of documents from the late 1700s to late 1800s including descriptions and field names.
From Tithe Maps around 1835 onwards, my field was previously owned by a William Rowe, his will of 1854 leaves it to his son and a field name of Castle Meadow is possible the same field (to this day, Land Registry have it listed as 'The Meadows'.
A quick visit to the field and the layered east hedge from a couple of weeks ago still has a hint of leaves, som it's still alive.
There were also about 15 sheep in the field from a couple of fields down the trackway - just about managed to herd them out and back through a couple of patchy hedges to the larger flock.
This weekend I'm down in Wiltshire, initially for an 'Apple Day' at Stourhead Farm Shop - quite a few historic varieties to munch through and then to Salisbury for a wander around the historic conservation area of Harnham Meadows (after reading the book Water Meadows.
Ignoring the soil structure differences, I was interested to see what trees were growing in this low lying area and the hedgerow content.
I also picked up a fantastic new book from Waterstones in Salisbury... The Tree House Diaries - 1 guy living as a hunter-gatherer for 6 months in a tree-house.
Out along the roads, I picked up some graft-wood of a reasonably prolific hedgerow apple tree between Salisbury and Stonehenge.
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