Geograph - photograph every grid square

TQ8859 : Bashford Barn Lane
"An unusually open aspect for Kent."

A quick comparison of the 1:10000 maps for 1970 and 1989 will show that a great many hedges and orchards were removed, mostly in the 1980s as I recall.

Farmers were being paid for ripping out cherry orchards, although I think here they were mainly apples, and one of the local farmers was investing heavily in new large machinery which worked more efficiently on large prairie-style fields.

Locals rapidly applied for tree preservation orders on some hedgerow trees they perceived as being under threat but this did not save them - the fines are relatively small...
Then set-aside crops were defined, in spite of protest from beekeepers, to include oil-seed rape and so we got the yellow peril, year on year, on these new large fields.
TQ8859 : Footpath from Bashford Barn Lane to Bredgar village