Bash more bracken

CHARLOTTE COOPER’S article tells us that Natural England and Historic England are embarking on a four-year research programme to understand the impact of brackencontrol methods (Town & Country, October 26), but the efficacy of bashing is not enlarged upon. Might I suggest this may be where these two distinguished bodies are missing a trick?

At prep school in the 1940s, my fellow pupils and I became experienced bracken bashers, clearing the hill above Rannoch Lodge in Perthshire each year, so that the grass could grow and the sheep could graze. Knocking the bracken heads off before they had time to establish foliage did the trick, as I recall. Alexander Sparks, by email