t’s hard to imagine a Piedmont without fences. They corral animals, keep riff-raff out, and provide context to the region’s bucolic spaces. Fences run alongside just about every highway and back road of the region. But not just any fence will do in the Piedmont, where so much of what forms the region’s identity is a tireless devotion to aesthetics.

Unlike industrial chain-link fences of office parks and opaque privacy fences of suburban subdivisions, Piedmont fences serve a markedly different way of life. Here, such enclosures are built not to obscure views; rather, they invite one to gaze out at verdant fields and centuries-old estates. Just as an attractive but unassuming frame enhances a work of art, fences accentuate pastoral landscapes. And like a home, a car, and clothing, a fence serves both practical and aesthetic functions. It makes a statement about its owner. With their sometimes white-knuckled grip on a landed-gentry lifestyle and all its associations, many folks here can be forgiven for worrying about what their fencing says about them.

“Fences are not just functional,” says Lara Rota of Gold Cup Stables and Fencing in Marshall. “People are very concerned about the way they’re going to look. Not just from the barn or their house, but how it’s going to look from the road.”

Chalk it up to horse culture.

“You’ve got all these horse fields and these gorgeous horses...I don’t think the area would be the same without the fences,” Rota says, adding that the Piedmont’s undulating terrain distinguishes it visually from other horse-centric areas of the United States. Fencing complements the rhythm of the Virginia landscape.

“We’ve got a lot of rolling hills, and one thing our crew does is roll the fence with the lay of the land. Whereas other areas, such as Kentucky, have more flat, open fields,” Rota says. “Especially at the foothills of the Blue Ridge, making sure the fence works with the lay of the land is important.”

Curtis Crawford has been building fences full time in the Piedmont for 13 years. The owner of Crawford Fencing in Sperryville, Crawford agrees with the high priority placed on the aesthetics by fence buyers.

“I find it [appearance] is about as important as function,” he says.
Even when his customers need wire fencing to keep dogs inside expansive yards, they will nonetheless obscure the purely functional wire by attaching it to a split-rail fence—“to make it look more country,” he says.

That’s not to say wire fencing has a fashion no-no in our region. It’s still a popular and relatively inexpensive option for cattle farmers, though not horse owners. Horses have trouble seeing wires, and can get caught up and seriously injured in barbed-wire and high-tensile wire fences, Crawford explains.

Landowners are increasingly buying faux-wooden fences built from flexible polymers, which are more durable but also more expensive than real wood. Most people do not even notice the difference between polymer fences and the real thing, he observes. Close to 90 percent of Crawford’s jobs are for cattle and horse farms, although some clients own no animals at all.

Wood or wire for Cliff Miller? The owner of the 830-acre Mount Vernon Farm near Sperryville, where he raises cattle, hogs, and sheep, is unequivocal. “A wooden fence is mainly for looks,” Miller says. “If we were going to have sheep inside a wooden fence, we would probably need to run some barbed wire between the boards.”

The black-board fence may well be the signature style of Piedmont fencing and a reflection of its horse culture. “When you drive around here, you see it everywhere; it’s just part of the scenery,” says Chris Cahill, owner of Piedmont Fencing in Rectortown. Cahill estimates that roughly 90 percent of his company’s work comes from building these three-board fences that provide style and utility, as well as a nice boost to property values.

Fences, Democracy, and Private Property

Rota says the fence is a signal that the agricultural lifestyle is still alive and well in the Piedmont. But more: fences are a ubiquitous symbol of the American ideals of democracy and private property that Virginians—like Albemarle’s Thomas Jeff erson with his vision of a nation of independent farmers—helped engender.