around the back of the big stone barn to a sort of outdoor workroom. Jamie took them to the unfinished end of a new stone hedge.
“So, what do you notice?”
“No mortar,” Case said with mock disgust, and everyone laughed.
“It's tapered and curves inward from the base,” Becky commented.
“Right. That centralizes the weight and pushes the hedge into the ground.”
“It's hollow in between the two sides,” Andrew noted. “Well, not hollow, but filled with dirt.”
“That's part of the traditional Cornish hedge design. Other hedges could be all stone. But that's not dirt. I call it ‘neutral earth.’ Dirt is part organic, and over time it breaks down and sinks, creating weakness. Soon enough, the stone faces will collapse inward. Neutral earth's inorganic. Around here, for example, there's a lot of rotted granite that breaks down to something like sand. We call it ‘growan.’ When I'm building a granite hedge, I look for a deposit of that stuff to fill the center—which is called the ‘heart,’ by the way. Down Boscastle way there's usually a layer of shillet—broken-up bits of slate—just below the turf. We'll be using that, plus quarry chips, I expect.
“Speaking of which, we'd best be getting back down there. Time to get to work. Oh, by the way, a couple of reminders. Burt, when you come tomorrow, no rubber wellies. Heavy boots is what you want. Don't want those dainty toes of yours crushed. And Becky—no shorts. Proper trousers.”
“Right you are, gov'nor,” she said. Burt nodded his big head slowly.
When their little caravan got back to the Visitor Centre car park they drove to the far end. The county council had hauled in several loads of stone, all slate but in an earthy array of colors, from sandy brown through charcoal to blue-black. They'd left a small Bobcat front loader as well. The crew had lunch, and then Jamie gave them the bad news.
“First job's the nastiest, by my lights. We need to excavate a bed for the grounders.”
“Grounders?” Newsome asked.
“The stones that make up the footin',” Case said. “They need to be set into the ground, which means diggin' a trench.”
“Not bad, for a mortar man,” Jamie teased. “Come on, then; tools in the van.”
Jamie had an impressive array of shovels, spades, picks, and something that looked like a combination pick and spade, called a mattock. He passed them out, and then ran two twenty-foot parallel lines of twine between stakes at the edge of the macadam, each about five feet apart.
“Why so wide?” Newsome asked. “We're not trying to stop tanks!”
Jamie laughed and gathered the crew by the two parallel guide lines.
“The gentleman wishes to know why I'm having you dig such a wide trench. Contrary to rumor, it isn't because I'm sadistic. There are rules of proportion in hedge laying. The first is that the base must be as wide as the hedge is to be tall. The standard height of a hedge is five feet, including the turf, or cope, on top. Also, the width of the top should be roughly half the width of the base. It's not that we're ‘trying to stop tanks,’ in Mr. Newsome's words; it's that we're trying to stop gravity from pulling the hedge down once it's laid.”
The five students set to work while Jamie wandered among the piles of stone the council had left. Case took his shovel and began to cut a line in the turf along the boundary Jamie had set. Becky watched him for a few moments, then grabbed a mattock and asked him to step aside.
“That'll take forever,” she said. She swung the mattock above her head, then, her strong shoulders arching, brought the broad blade down and, in one smooth stroke, peeled back a one-inch-thick strip of sod as wide as the mattock blade. She moved her feet slightly to one side and repeated the movement. Working like a machine, she'd stripped the five-foot-wide trench surface to a length of ten feet in a matter of a few minutes. She stopped, drenched with sweat, stepped aside, smiled, and said, “All yours now, gents.”
Andrew shook his head. “Wow, Becky.”
“We do a lot of footpath maintenance at the trust; I'm well acquainted with this fellow,” she said, hefting the heavy mattock.
Even silent Burt was moved to observe, with characteristic opacity, “Lass doaes a fitty job, she doaes.”
Case said nothing.
They set the sod aside to be used eventually on the top of the hedge, and the men began digging. It wasn't long before they ran into