You will find stonewalls in many places on South Fyn and the islands, but in very few places are they as plentiful and beautiful as on Brahetrolleborg and Holstenshus. Naturally, the stonewalls bear witness to the many stones in the moraine landscape. The stones were an obstacle to cultivating the soil, but they were also a resource that was used for road material and in construction. Indeed, in 1786 Holstenshus decided to construct three “hospitals” made from boulders. Each of the hospitals had 6–8 flats for poor old and weak people within the area of the estate. Two of the hospitals have been preserved; one of them in the village of Diernæs close to Faaborg.
Most of the stones, however, exist as stonewalls in the landscape. During the agricultural reforms (1770–1820), the eagerness of the reforms was expressed by clearing the fields of stones and building stonewalls, and royal prizes were bestowed on especially eager wall builders. Typically, the construction of stonewalls was initiated by the estates because they could use the compulsory labour of the tenant farmers. Later, many peasants began constructing stonewalls on their own fields.
The stonewalls served a variety of purposes. Some stonewalls along Brændegårdsvej outline the manor forest, which was emphasised a lot in the Forest Regulation of 1805. The intent of the law was to protect the new growth of trees that could be used for the rebuilding of the Danish fleet. Other stonewalls mark the boundaries between the properties of various farmland and others border fields and natural cropping areas to keep the grazing animals in or out. In order to serve as fences for horses or cows, the stonewalls had to be more than one metre tall. Where the stonewalls are lower today, they were typically supplied with a thatched fence on top of the wall and/or a ditch on the inside of the stonewall. No matter what function a stonewall serves, it still requires a lot of maintenance, which is prioritised by many stonewall owners, even if the role of the stonewalls as fences ended around the year 1900. Now they have a culture-historical value that embodies many people’s idea of landscape beauty.
