Inland Customs Line - Rediscovery

Rediscovery

Despite its scale, the customs line and associated hedge were not widely known in either Britain or India, the standard histories of the period neglecting to mention them. Roy Moxham, a conservator at the University of London library, wrote a book on the customs line and his search for its remains that was published in 2001. This followed his finding, in 1995, of a passing mention of the hedge in Major-General Sir W.H. Sleeman's 1893 work Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official. Moxham looked up the hedge in the India Office Records of the British Library and determined to locate its remnants.

Moxham conducted extensive research in London before making three trips to India to look for any remains of the line. In 1998 he located a small raised embankment in the Etawah district in Uttar Pradesh which may be all that remains of the Great Hedge of India. Moxham's book, which he claims to be the first on the subject, details the history of the line and his attempts to locate its modern remains. The book was translated into the Marathi language by Anand Abhyankar and published in 2007.