Hedges and Boundaries

Can identity be linked to landscape? By 'identity' I mean the sense of self that we all have, the sense of who we are. I have been thinking about national identity; how we define where we come from. From an early age I was aware of Irish and Welsh and Scottish strands in my family history, yet all these strands had become English - albeit Liverpool English. I thought this morning what if something radically different was turned up in family history research, like a black African great-grandfather? I thought that that would startle me out of my assumptions but it also made me realise that the Irish/Scots/Welsh family have in some way affected my sense of who I am, of where I come from, from a very early age.

And of course if I was the Duke of Westminster then my whole life would have been defined by 'landscape' in the sense, the awareness, of the responsibility of owning large areas of Mayfair and Cheshire; and beyond this the sense that this ownership has defined my family since the Conquest. On a vaguer level, perhaps a more poetic level, I have been thinking about Welsh hedges. These field boundaries always make me think of driving into Wales as a child, seeing the family in Llangollen and then home for school on the Monday morning; even now they remind me of my auntie Gwynneth, my uncle Arthur, the Welsh side of the family, my awareness of that stretching back forty years. All from seeing some ancient thorn hedges!

There is more to this linking of cultural/national identity and elements of landscape than I can see. All I can say at present is that it has been on my mind as we explore this borderland between England and Wales.