British ‘Hero of the Hedgerow’ Wins Another Case

Colin Seymour may seem the classic English eccentric, a self-taught lawyer going to court invoking a long-forgotten law to defend a hedge.

But he won, and may have struck an important precedent that will help save the rolling patchwork of the ancient English countryside from the bulldozers of modern development.

Fired by a passion for the rights of the public, the 63-year-old former teacher has prevailed in a string of court cases against farmers, government bodies and others who want to close paths, tear up trees or gouge out mines.

“Petitions and reasoned letters are a waste of time,” he said. “If you can write a half-page letter threatening the law, it sharpens their minds. You do not have to be a solicitor or a barrister in order to be able to read and reason and put together a legal argument.”

In January, Seymour won a victory hailed by people worried about the loss of hedgerows--namely a judgment saving a 56-yard strip of ragged hedge in Flamborough, his Yorkshire village near the northeast coast.

His case was based on a 1765 law, called an Inclosure Act, which said the hedge must be maintained “forever.” There are about 4,000 similar local acts across the country, Seymour said, and all use the same words: “to make and forever maintain.”

“A properly maintained hedge might last for 1,000 years,” he added.

The victory brought him widespread acclaim.

“Hail to the Hero of the Hedgerow,” said the Daily Telegraph. The Times congratulated Seymour in an editorial, waxing poetic about the countryside “defined by its hedgerows: ancient, vibrant corridors of wildlife between its fields and pastures.”

Hedgerows have rimmed English fields since Saxon times, and some are a thousand years old. In the 18th century, when much commonly held land was “inclosed,” or divided into individual parcels, hedgerows marked out boundaries.

But modern combine-harvesters need open spaces, and farmers have been tearing out hedgerows for half a century. About 250,000 miles--half the national total--have disappeared since 1945.

The environmental impact worries many people. Even in winter, the hedges are a shelter for meadow creatures, a hunting ground for owls and hibernation quarters for hedgehogs. In summer, they swarm with life.

When the Flamborough parish council decided to destroy 56 yards of hedge to make way for a bowling green, Seymour found the 232-year-old law requiring the parish to maintain that hedge.

“The court held that these obligations are still binding today because no further act of Parliament has ever repealed them,” Seymour said.

Flamborough was seen as the test case for these old laws, and environmentalists were delighted. “Congratulations” cards decorate the mantelpiece above a flickering coal fire in the sitting room of Seymour’s spartan cottage.

Seymour gets by on a government pension for the disabled. He’s nearly deaf and has lost his peripheral vision through glaucoma.

Though he dropped out of school at 15, Seymour later earned bachelor’s degrees in education and social sciences and a master’s degree in management studies.

The hedge case has not made him universally popular in Flamborough, where there isn’t much entertainment. The bowling green had a lot of support.

“He may be a hero to some,” Judge Tom Cracknell said when he delivered his decision. “But to others, I have no doubt that he is the villain of the piece and a thorough nuisance.”

Seymour described some of the tangled legal cases in which he has taken on British Waterways, British Rail, Yorkshire Water, county councils, several millionaire farmers and peers of the realm.

In his first case, 20 years ago, he halted the National Coal Board’s plans for open-pit mining around his former house.

He spends hours wading through old documents until he finds what he needs to win a case.

Several of his cases have involved encroachments on historic paths and other public rights of way. In 1987, for instance, he successfully took up the case of two men who had been trying since 1949 to get a public pathway reopened.

“To win this case for them and watch them walk the two miles along this woodland path gave me more pleasure than any other case before or since,” Seymour said.