British Agricultural History Society For the past decade or so, I have been studying Australian rural fences and I have published several papers on them (copies available on request). Part of my current interest is to determine the technological origins of Australian fences.
General Research notes
British Agricultural History Society - please send any responses in first instance to John Broad by email[August 2001] ENGLISH ANTECEDENTS TO AUSTRALIAN FARM FENCES
In a recent paper (Pickard, J. 1999 The first fences: fencing the colony of New South Wales, 1788 - 1823. Agricultural History 73,46-69.) I show that the first fences in NSW, in 1788, were made of pales of split logs stuck end-on into the ground. I speculated on the origin of the technology, but was unable to provide a firm link to fences used earlier in England in the 18th century. Subsequently, I found Oliver Rackham's description of medieval deer pales (pp 191-192 in Rackham, O. 1980 Ancient woodland. Its
history, vegetation and uses in England. Edward Arnold, London) and it is clear that this type of fence derives directly from deer pales.
Jean Birrell's paper (Birrell, J. 1992 Deer and deer farming in medieval England. Agricultural History Review 40, 112-126) provides some tantalising information on deer pales, and I would like to contact her for some more information. Does anyone know her current address?
Australian post and rail fences were perfected technologically before 1823. A key feature is that tenons cut on the ends of the rails fit into mortices cut through the posts. The rails were NOT nailed to the outsides of the posts, unlike those used as temporary dead fences to protect the "real" fence: the live fence or hedge while it was young (see e.g. p. 487 and Fig 474 in Loudon, J.C. (1831) An encyclopaedia of agriculture. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, London. Second edition.).
I have been unable to find a convincing English antecedent to post and rail fences using mortices and tenons. They are more like fences recorded in eastern USA before the end of the 18th century (see e.g Larsen, EL 1947 Pehr Kalms’ observations on the fences of North America. Agricultural History 21, 75-78.) Terry Jordon argues convincingly that these were derived from Scandinavia (see e.g. Jordan, T.G. & Kaups, M. (1989) Backwoods frontier. An ethnic and ecological interpretation. Johns Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore). However, migration from Scandinavia to NSW in 1800 - 1820 was minimal. So I am unable to provide a convincing origin for the technology.
My second query: does anyone know of references to English post and rail fences (WITH mortices and tenon, not nails) in the 18th century?