Ha-ha

The design can include a turfed incline that slopes downward to a sharply vertical face (typically a masonry retaining wall).

This sort of opening is, on some occasions, to be preferred, for that it does not at all interrupt the prospect, as the bars of a grill do.The name ha-ha is attested in toponyms in New France from 1686 (as seen today in Saint-Louis-du-Ha!

[5]In the 18th century, they were often called a sunken or sunk fence, at least in formal writing, as by Horace Walpole, George Mason, and Humphry Repton.

[7] Walpole surmised that the name is derived from the response of ordinary folk on encountering them and that they were "then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha!

The deer-leap or saltatorium consisted of a ditch with one steep side surmounted by a pale (picket-style fence made of wooden stakes) or hedge, which allowed deer to enter the park but not to leave.

Since the time of the Norman conquest of England the right to construct a deer-leap was granted by the king, with reservations made as to the depth of the foss or ditch and the height of the pale or hedge.

[14] In Britain, the ha-ha is a feature of the landscape gardens laid out by Charles Bridgeman and William Kent and was an essential component of the "swept" views of Capability Brown.

The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without.During his excavations at Iona in the period 1964–1984, Richard Reece discovered an 18th-century ha-ha designed to protect the abbey from cattle.

This deep ha-ha was installed around 1774 to prevent sheep and cattle, grazing at a stopover on Woolwich Common on their journey to the London meat markets, from wandering onto the Royal Artillery gunnery range.

[24] A later American president, Thomas Jefferson, "built a ha-ha at the southern end of the South Lawn [of the White House], which was an eight-foot wall with a sunken ditch meant to keep the livestock from grazing in his garden.

The temporary barriers were later replaced with a new ha-ha, a low 0.76 m (30-inch) granite stone wall that incorporated lighting and doubled as a seating bench.