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Ranchers.net

All the deer hunting pictures reminded me of this story but the topic doesn't quite fit under hunting! Or anywhere else for that matter:
"Sharecropping was big business in old England. If you were lucky enough to own a manor house with extensive landholdings, you needed workers to make it pay. So you gave them a bit of your land to farm and they would return a share of each crop as payment.

Problem was that sharecropping peasants weren’t always grateful for this often inequitable relationship. The lord of the manor didn’t want these workers to get any ideas about land redistribution, so he ruled this miniature kingdom with an iron fist. If someone broke the law on the estate, it was off with ther heads. To make an example of them the lord had the severed heads dipped in hot tar and impaled on a stake in some high-profile location.

Some British gardeners claim this is the reason that ball-shaped finials became so popular in garden design - inspired by this head-on-a-pike in front of the manor house. So when new homes were built, those wishing to emulate all that defined the noble English manor adopted these round accents in stone . Gruesome yes, but probably true."
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