GenWestUK: A-Z Challenge 2015: H is for Ha-Ha

Thursday, 9 April 2015

A-Z Challenge 2015: H is for Ha-Ha

I bet you thought I was joking, didn't you? (see what I did there: 'ha-ha'?)

Well, there actually is such a thing as a ha-ha - and it's a landscape feature. The closest I could get to a link to genealogy was that it would have been popular among your ancestors, if they were wealthy enough.

Imagine you have a beautiful view, and a herd of cows walks straight across it and obliterates it entirely. Well, in order to stop this sort of thing from happening, our ancestors would build a 'ha-ha', which was a sunken ditch, supported by a wall (that didn't come up so high you knew it was there). This kept the cows out. (Actually, my ancestors were more likely to be the peasants driving the cows...)

Nobody knows who thought of the name.

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4 comments:

Unknown9 April 2015 at 20:02
Wow learn something new every day. Thanks for sharing. I could so see me walking straight off the edge and falling in the ditch...lol.
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Birgit9 April 2015 at 22:44
OK who did think this up-they must have had a couple of pints. It makes sense but my family was with you-we were not the rich kind
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SENCO Cat Herder9 April 2015 at 23:00
I'm so pleased today because I did know what a ha-ha was but I liked the cartoon that showed exactly how it worked :)
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Wendy10 April 2015 at 13:56
I'm with Trina. Falling into that ditch might create another type of Ha-Ha moment for everyone else.
~Visiting from AtoZ
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