The Marchwarden

What it looks like, and what it does

A tall, narrow stag, grey as weathered oak. Antlers like a field gate strung with rusted wire. Moss on the shoulder. It stands quite still at field edges with its brow against the hedge.

Walks hedge lines at dusk. Pushes. Leaves boundary stones tilted. Prefers boundaries between families who have shared them for generations.

What is known

The county surveyor has resurveyed the Ashby parishes four times in thirty years. Each time the boundaries differ by up to two metres. The marchwarden is seen walking the margins at dusk, pushing against hedges with its brow.

The disputes it causes are real and fierce. Neighbours who have never argued find themselves in court over a strip of nettles. Where it has passed, the old stones read correctly to both parties.

What it can do

• Shifts a boundary by metres overnight, together with the markers, the maps and the memory of the old line
• Persuades both neighbours that the new line was always the line

Where it stops

• Cannot move a boundary that both parties have walked together on the same day
• Is held off by the old rite of beating the bounds

An encounter

Rhys laid out the same chain-length on the same hedge for the fourth time and came up two metres short. He asked the farmer, who showed him the stone. It read what it read. Rhys wrote that the stone was correct, the chain was correct, and the parish was smaller.

Ewan Rhys, county surveyor, The Ashby parish boundary, Four surveys across thirty years

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Four independent surveys show a net inward drift of the parish boundaries of 0.9 metres a decade.
• rumor: That the field in the middle is where it was born.
• interpretation: It may be marking a boundary no map has yet drawn, with the hedges for stakes.

Still unresolved

Plotted across thirty years, the moved boundaries enclose a single field that nobody has ever owned.

Where it has been recorded

• Ashby Parish (confirmed) — Recorded by Ewan Rhys, county surveyor.

Stories about it

• Wire at the Gate (Grotesque encounter, 4 min) — A farmer repairing his boundary fence at Pinfold Lane finds the wire already strung, the posts already driven, and a stag made of barbed wire standing in the field watching him finish.
• It Was Always on This Side (Entity story, 4 min) — Four times in thirty years a county surveyor has resurveyed the Ashby parish bounds and come up short, always by a metre or two, always against the same grey stag at dusk.

Connected entities

• The Landlord of Tenth Street — Both rewrite what neighbours remember, a line in one case and a tenancy in the other, and both are courteous about it.