Words In History: Greenhew, Greenhue
Historian George Redmonds explains the legal rights implicit in the word Greenhew.
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This was an English equivalent of vert and could apply either to the green parts of trees in the woods and forests, or to a tenant's payment for the right to cut such greenery, probably as fodder for his animals.
A law of 1598 refers to people making waste 'in the greene hew of the Forrest', and a Tong rental of 1626 had the heading 'Boones and Greenhues due and rec(eive)d'.
In Woolley manor, where these payments were still being made in the 1680s, a tenant said that he had heard that 'green-hue' meant the farmers' right 'to take Radlins for the thatching and mortering of their houses'. 'Radlins' here were twigs or thin boughs but the tenant's need to explain the term may suggest that it was already in decline there. However, according to Wright, the 'green hew' was still being paid in Dalton in Furness in the nineteenth century. It referred there to the right to cut pea-sticks in certain woods.
