Mrs Tiggywinkle

Last night I spotted a little hedgehog wiggling its way across the lawn, having bravely struck out from its normal habitat of hedges and undergrowth perhaps in search of new additions to its menu. As it proceeded it made little grunting noises almost like a piglet, hence its name hedgehog.

Hedgehogs usually sleep during the day, awaking at night or late evening to search for food. A hedgehog’s diet tends to consist of insects, worms, centipedes, snails and mice. They can walk over two miles in just one night to hunt for bugs and are thus a great help for gardeners as they love to eat slugs and caterpillars. Sadly, there is now considerable evidence for a dramatic decline in the hedgehog population since the millennium, by perhaps one third. Hopefully they like Highclere as there are very few fences here so they can roam and forage in freedom. We have a great variety of native hedges and vegetation here which is not at all manicured, so it supports a great diversity of bug life.

Hedgehogs have an annual litter which can range between one and eleven ‘hoglets’. The babies remain with their mothers for only four to seven weeks before heading out on their own but if you do manage to see them together, the collective noun is rather appropriately a prickle of hedgehogs. As autumn settles in, hedgehogs will all spend their time eating to fatten themselves up and building cosy winter nests (hibernacula) out of leaves and twigs as they prepare to prepare to hibernate through the winter. They do not have many predators, but females must guard against male hedgehogs, who might prey upon the young of their species

The most famous hedgehog is of course the endearing Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, the hard-working washerwoman from the Beatrix Potter stories whose character was inspired by Beatrix Potter’s own pet hedgehog. Written one hundred years ago when so many home chores were performed manually, these days the story is slightly from another time or world but with so much real detail that it is still a perfectly magical book.
Hedgehogs also make an appearance in Alice in Wonderland as part of the mad Croquet game. In chapter eight, the Queen of Hearts creates a game of croquet where the hoops are made from playing cards of soldiers bent over at the waist, the mallets are upside down flamingos, and the croquet balls are curled up hedgehogs. Unfortunately, when Alice tried to deploy her flamingo mallet, it looked up at her in a quite off-putting way whilst the “croquet ball” simply uncurled itself and walked off.

Croquet is in itself quite a curious game. My parents were very competitive, played as partners and took no prisoners. At one holiday house in Kent, the croquet pitch could best be described as sporting. It was slightly banked up on one side with a willow tree and pond on the other. It was thus very challenging with a huge advantage for the home team who knew it foibles – summer afternoon matches offered endless amusement.

Whilst croquet may seem to be a quintessentially English game, the name suggests it was actually derived from a French game. The rules were highly variable until 1851 when the rules were standardised through John Jaques (whose croquet sets still remain the mark of excellence today) in collaboration with the All England Croquet Club. They have remained fundamentally unchanged since.

We still play it at Highclere and bring out our sets for various events such as the Magic of the Movies in September. One of our team, Sarah, has proved an excellent coach to visitors who wish to have a go although our mallet and balls are rather more conventional than flamingos and hedgehogs.