How did a Ha Ha get its name?
A Ha Ha was more for aesthetic purposes than to act as a defence. I take the point that it defended the grounds close to a grand house from roaming livestock etc but was designed to allow the owners of the houses to see the view rather than to have an unsightly fence or hedge in the way. In many cases the owners of such properties went to the expense of moving whole villages out of the line of sight to improve their own view. For example, when Chatsworth House was built in Derbyshire, the whole of the village of Edensor was relocated round the corner. Also having paid a landscaper, such as Capability Brown, to design a park worth viewing anything that inpinged on that view was removed. Hence the Ha Ha. The name is supposed to come from the fact that they worked so well that lots of people didn’t see them at all and often fell over them. It is either derived from the cry of the person as they fell or from the fact that everyone else fell about laughing at them!
