In the Triwizard Tournament, the final maze had been made of hedges.
During the dissolution of serfdom in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Britain's emerging bourgeoisie and new aristocracy had violently driven peasants off their land, seized their allotted plots and common land, stripped them of their rights to use and own land, restricted or abolished their original communal farming and grazing rights, then enclosed the seized land and turned it into privately owned pastures and large farms.
They used hedges, fences, and ditches to mark boundaries. By 1945, the British Muggle government had begun implementing a new rural policy, but its execution was a complete mess. Farmers could produce permits allowing them to plant hedges on one hand, and permits allowing them to remove those same hedges on the other. Over the forty years leading up to 1985, Britain lost ninety-six thousand miles of hedgerows. As for the government funds squandered on destroying them, they were beyond counting.
The Malfoy family's hereditary estate had likewise been enclosed by hedges. When Lucius heard that the Muggles were holding a meeting about hedgerows, he went as well.
Among the people from all walks of life attending the meeting, some firmly insisted that the hedges should continue to be destroyed. The fairy-tale scenery featured in travel magazines was being ruined by wildly overgrown hedgerows. Not only should the hedges be torn down, but the high-voltage pylons and supermarkets should be demolished as well, restoring Britain's original landscape.
As rents in city centers kept rising, many supermarkets had already begun moving to the suburbs. Modern life was undoubtedly destroying the old past.
Others believed that the hedges should not be removed. Shrubs were, in fact, a "landscape feature," remnants of the Enclosure Movement. Attempting to destroy the hedges was nothing more than artificial