Traditional Woodland Crafts E-Book

Ray Tabor

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 247

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The classic text on coppicing and woodland crafts, redesigned for a new generation of woodspeople. If you're lucky enough to have access to a patch of woodland, this book contains everything you need to set up, manage and profit from a thriving coppice. But even if you don't, there's plenty of information on traditional woodland crafts here for you: learn how to work with bought coppiced wood to make all manner of products, from the archetypal besom broom and humble tent pegs to sturdy gate hurdles. Woodland crafts expert Ray Tabor guides you through a range of heritage woodland conservation methods. He introduces the best tools for each job – the time-honoured woodsman's billhook being the most important of all – and the devices you'll need. He shows how to select wood for each purpose, from ash, traditionally used for tool handles, to chestnut for making perfect fences. There's also an in-depth exploration of the essential art of riving (splitting wooden poles by hand). Full of invaluable advice, historical information, useful diagrams and evocative photography, this book will help you reconnect to nature and the environment, and gain immense pleasure from creating beautiful crafted products using heritage methods.

Leseprobe

Contents

________

Preface

Part One: Woodland work

1 Woodmanship

2 The Raw Materials

Part Two: Techniques

3 The Care of the Wood

4 Tools of the Trade

5 Devices

6 Measuring and Cutting

7 Riving Wood

Part Three: Products

8 Materials for Gardens and Fencing

9 Thatching Wood

10 A Miscellany of Products

11 Besom Brooms

12 Gate Hurdles

13 Wattle Hurdles

Appendix 1: Dimensions of less common tools

Appendix 2: Dimensions of woodman’s devices

Appendix 3: Useful measures

Appendix 4: Making charcoal in a steel drum

Endnotes

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Useful addresses

Index

Preface

This book is about the traditional craft of growing wood by means of coppicing and converting it, in the woodland while still green, into artefacts such as hurdles and besoms. In short, woodmanship. It describes all the long-established means of using small round wood, with the exception of chair-bodging, which is covered by many other excellent books, clog-making and conventional charcoal-burning, which were exclusively the province of itinerant craftspeople rather than woodmen. The crafts described are not peculiar to England: many of them, with local variations, are practised in both Europe and North America. The basic skills they demand are universal.

Why write another book about woodland crafts? Because the many years of neglect our native woodlands suffered in the 20th century, and from which many are now fortunately emerging, interrupted that unwritten process which passed on the long-established lore of woodmanship. Many woodlands are now managed not by acknowledged craftspeople, but by part-time woodmen – conservationists, green-wood craftspeople wanting to practise the old skills, or landowners seeking in some way to utilize a wasted resource – all without the advantage of any proper apprenticeship. It is for this sort of woodmen that this book is primarily intended: a source of reference on how to accomplish many of the crafts; and to set a standard for doing them effectively.

It was as a naturalist that I came to the woodlands of eastern England, but I became a woodman. I was fortunate to meet and be trained by a man of Kent who had learned in boyhood the ways of a master hurdlemaker, and I have met and learned from many craftspeople, mainly in my native East Anglia, Kent and Dorset. The wisdom on these pages is theirs, not mine, in most cases as practised by their grandfathers before them, in the late 19th century, when woodland crafts enjoyed their heyday. Any errors in the descriptions, however, are my own.

Although the core of this book describes those tools and methods necessary to make coppice products, remember that this is only one of the three elements essential to support a woodland trade. Without a sound market and good raw material, as history has shown, there will be no trade and often no coppices.

Although this book does not have ‘conservation’ in its title, it describes what is probably the oldest conservation process known to man. Coppicing not only preserved trees where they grew, it also enhanced the richness of the wildlife on these sites. Many ancient woodlands provide living proof of this diversity, which explains why so many conservationists use coppicing as a vital management tool.

‘Learn to walk before you can run, and to crawl before you do either’, is the message from every woodman. When you start, try to visit woodlands where people know what they are doing; master the basic skills before moving on to making products; look out for good courses; then once you have mastered the rudiments, contact a craftsperson, who will invariably help to improve your speed and finish, provided you don’t waste their time.

I hope that reading this book will encourage you not only to work in our native woodlands but also through proper management to care for them, so this unique renewable resource will be passed on in good heart to those who follow us. A coppiced woodland is the most beautiful and satisfying place to work; a place of exquisite spring flowers, gentle birdsong, and cheerful warmth all winter, reflected in the functional beauty of its products.

To those who are just starting, I wish you the joy of it.

Note

Woodmanship is a craft rich in its own special words that are still in regular use. These words are used throughout the book, and in italics where they first occur. The glossary, on here, contains only those words whose background or meaning may not be fully explained in the text. The names of tools, or the various parts of artefacts, are not included where their meaning is clear as used.

Spring trees in the New Forest, Hampshire.

1

WOODMANSHIP

When Neolithic man first fashioned a primitive hurdle with rods cut from the stump of a tree he had previously felled, the craft of woodmanship began. Many centuries later medieval woodmen raised it to a peak of efficiency, managing their woodlands to produce a continuous supply of rods and poles, which they converted into fuel, fencing, tools and much else. Their legacy was still evident both to John Evelyn in the 17th century, who wrote, ‘There is not a more noble and worthy husbandry than this,’ and in the New World where the self-sufficient homesteaders and farmers all practised their woodcraft. Woodmanship bred woodmen: men whose lives revolved around the endless succession of poles arising every season in their woodlands; men who were the first true conservationists, harvesting those poles yet preserving their woodlands without planting, and passing on their craft from father to son. This is how they worked.

Coppiced woods and how they work

When the last Ice Age retreated from England some 12,000 years ago, it left a landscape of tundra and moor which was gradually colonized by trees. The first of these were birch, aspen and sallow, strong invaders tolerant of low temperatures and exposed sites. They were followed by hazel and pine, and then as the climate gradually warmed, by oak, alder, lime, elm, ash, beech, hornbeam and maple, spreading slowly northwards and forming a wildwood that was a mosaic of these native species. The trees that grew in a particular area were determined mainly by its soil, climate and water table. Hardly had the wildwood clothed the land when, in about 4000 BC, Neolithic settlers began its destruction in order to cultivate their crops. But some of it they cut to produce small, easy-to-use poles, laying a foundation for the coppices we have today. By the 13th century England’s landscape was one of isolated woodlands intensely managed, and those ancient woodlands we still retain are very precious, their trees a direct link to the lost wildwood, their form the product of ancient management. They are cut regularly and regenerate naturally, distinct from plantations, which are usually mono-cultures designed to be harvested like a cereal crop, and then replanted.

Not all trees are native. Sweet chestnut and sycamore, for example, are introduced, and have become naturalized in many woodlands, growing quite happily alongside native trees.

Coppicing

Anyone who has felled a Christmas tree knows that the stump they leave will die. But do the same to most native English trees and a number of shoots will arise from either the stump or the roots. Hazel, ash, maple, alder, birch, chestnut, oak and many others coppice, producing spring which grows to a crop of poles (fig. 1); their stump then becomes known as a stool. Cherry, most elm and aspen produce sucker shoots from the roots, each one of which produces an individual tree, while the original stump rots away (fig. 2). The trees of America are of much the same genera, and many behave in a similar way.

Trees that coppice can also be pollarded (fig. 3). This involves cutting back the trunk at about 2.7m (9ft) above the ground, at which point a handful of poles, rarely straight but suitable for firewood, is produced. The poles grow safely beyond the bite of deer or cattle. Pollards are often found along woodland boundaries.

Stools have the root system to support a mature tree, so that after cutting, all their energy is channelled into producing new shoots, resulting in remarkable rates of growth: in the first summer hazel spring will grow a good 1.5m (5ft), ash up to 2.1m (7ft), and sallow an astounding 3m (10ft) – as much as 50mm (2in) in one day! If you look at the annual rings of a coppiced pole you will see the great wide gaps of the first few seasons as the shoot became established (fig. 4). Moreover, stools and pollards live for a far longer span than an uncut tree: hazel, maple, lime and chestnut stools several hundred years old are commonplace, while Oliver Rackham described an ash stool in Suffolk, a ring of poles over 3m (10ft) in diameter, which must have been approaching 2,000 years in age.

Woodmen were quick to seize upon these benefits. Small poles, easier to work than timber, perpetually renewing themselves without recourse to planting, fast-growing and free, provided the ideal material for making many products, or providing endless fuel – particularly important during North American winters!

1 What happens when trees are coppiced. Stems that have grown from stools above ground such as ash (a1), or below ground such as hazel (a2), are cut down (b). After two summers each stool boasts a thick crop of new shoots (c).

2 Suckering trees such as elm or aspen have common root systems (a). When cut down (b), the stumps rot away, but new trees grow up from sucker shoots on the roots (c).

3 Pollards are cut at 2.7m (9ft) or more above the ground, and regenerate in exactly the same way as coppice stools. They are often found, as illustrated, on the boundary banks of woods.

4 Coppice shoots grow very fast immediately after cutting; this can be seen in the wide spacing of the first few annual rings.

Timber

The stuff resulting from coppicing is wood. Timber is much bigger, the single trunks of large trees 80 or more years old – oak, ash, elm, chestnut and sometimes maple. Although rarely handled by woodmen in England it was grown in woodlands together with coppice, which is often then called underwood.

Timber trees are known as standards, growing either from seedlings as single-stemmed trees known as maidens (fig. 5a) when they are young, or from stools from which all the poles but one have been removed, a process known as singling or promoting (fig. 5b). Woodmen always had an eye for promising timber trees, and forbore to cut them, although as we shall see in Chapter 3, they did not encourage too many, because their shade suppressed the growth of the more valuable underwood.

Standards branch quite low and have short boles, for underwood does not grow high enough to suppress all the side branches (fig. 6). This was fine when houses and ships demanded curved timbers, but it suits less well modern sawmills, which demand the longest possible straight trunk.

5 Timber trees are grown among the underwood. Recruit replacements by letting maiden trees grow on (a), or by singling good coppice poles (b).

6 Structure of a typical mixed woodland: an oak (a) standard grown from the stump of a previous felling. Branching out above the underwood, it suppresses whatever grows in its shade. Different underwood species grow at different rates; sallow (b) and ash (c) grow taller than hazel (d).

In England oak has always been the predominant standard. It was customarily felled in May when the underwood cutting is complete and the sap rising, because at this time its bark, formerly in great demand for tanning, peels off most easily.

Wood in the community

It is sometimes difficult to understand the central role that wood used to play in the life of every community. Woodland was an important resource from which nothing was wasted. Fuel was the major product: not the great split logs expected as firewood today, but cord upon cord of branchwood, and thousands of scores of faggots used for cooking, baking and heating the home. Early industry was equally dependent on wood, and until coal and coke became readily available many trades used coppice poles charred to ‘coals’ to smelt or otherwise form their products.

Vast amounts of small wood went to make fencing pales, hedging stakes, hurdles and gates: everyone, it seems, had a boundary to define or animals to enclose. Likewise wood provided many with the roof over their heads: not simply the small timber beams that framed the house, but lathes for the walls and ceilings, small wood to make the rafters, clefts for shingles and hazel to hold the thatch.

Coppicing was equally widespread in North America, and although dominated by the need for fuel, the more isolated homesteaders each practised their own crafts. In contrast the English village structure generated craftspeople who specialized in making the rakes, brooms or handles essential to the everyday life of their community. Such was the importance of these products and the supply of fuel that local woodlands were vigorously protected from deer, cattle and the plough.

Now there is much less use for round wood, its traditional roles either lost altogether or usurped by some alternative. As reliance on wood declined so did the number of woodlands, and many of those we still have in England owe their survival more to their ability to hold pheasants than for their value as a renewable source of wood or energy. That was until the 1970s, when the value of this inheritance was re-discovered on both sides of the Atlantic, initially by ecologists and environmentalists, but then increasingly by a wider spectrum of people who see a role for this type of non-destructive management.

The history of woodmanship

Sources of information

Several sources give fascinating glimpses of how old a craft this is, how it was practised, and how much it has changed over the centuries. (Those who want to delve more deeply should consult the definitive works on ancient woodlands and woodmanship by Dr Oliver Rackham, to whom this account owes much.)

Archaeology Students of wood are poorly served by archaeological remains: damp and fungi have rendered most items mere shadows in the soil. Wet, peaty ground, however, where air has been excluded, contains some remarkable artefacts from the earliest woodmen.

Early records Many large medieval houses, both religious and secular, kept records of their estates. These tell the size of woodlands, how often the underwood was cut, what products were produced, how much was sold, and for what price. These dry manuscripts, usually written in Latin, are supplemented by early paintings depicting both tools and products.

Books The first great book on trees and woodlands was written by the scholar John Evelyn in 1664. Although much of his work is devoted to encouraging the planting and raising of forest trees, Evelyn recorded with great understanding and unfailing accuracy the practices of woodmanship. Unfortunately few followed in his mould, but early photographs do repay close study for the detail they can reveal.

Verbal tradition Woodmanship as practised in the 19th and 20th centuries is best gleaned by talking to older woodmen. Invariably their fathers and grandfathers before them were woodmen, passing on by word of mouth their methods, and by inheritance, their tools.

Prehistoric woodmanship

Among the most impressive finds of recent years have been the trackways constructed around 3900 BC across the peaty Somerset levels. Some of these, built of simple wattle hurdles, show a clear understanding of how to use both selected small poles and different species. The wood came not from giant trees in the wildwood but from stools, although whether these were cut systematically we may never be sure. There is little evidence of riven wood, but the belief that this resulted from a lack of iron tools may not be true: a stone axe capable of felling a pole can easily be used to start a split, and any woodman worth his salt can complete the riving of it by hand (fig. 65, page 103).

Work at Butser Hill in Hampshire has shown how Iron Age farmers built huts of wooden poles, wattle-and-daub walls and thatch, clearly suggesting the organized management of wood. The Romans certainly understood the advantages of coppice, their writers recording the rotation at which chestnut should be cut, a wood so useful to them that they introduced it to England. And lastly, finds of Saxon barrels bound with hazel hoops confirm that by AD 700 riving and using small wood was as sophisticated as it is today.

Woodmanship as portrayed in the Bayeux Tapestry.

A freshly cut hazel stool.

The golden age: the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution

Although long before 1066 people understood how to coppice trees and produce complex artefacts from them, it was during the next 800 years that woodland management reached an intensity and efficiency never matched before or after.

Every scrap of wood that was felled was utilized: rods for wattles, lathes, thatching, hoops and baskets; poles for pales, stakes, rails, hedging, staves and handles; cord for firewood and charcoal; and faggots for kindling, ovens, drains and cheap firewood. Despite this demand, woodlands were not exploited destructively. Their health was ensured by the medieval woodmen who controlled when underwood was felled, who replaced dead stools by plashing, promoted good young trees for timber, and who fenced the coppice regrowth from deer and cattle. As bonfires were uncommon, damage to trees and plants was rare.

Billhooks, axes, side-axes (beautifully shown, in use, on the Bayeux Tapestry), and morticing knives were all available, and although some of the patterns have changed with time, they were all supremely effective, for medieval carpentry has yet to be surpassed. And it was now that the rules of good management, such as clean, low cuts and avoiding damage to the stools, were understood and recorded (see Chapters 3 and 6).

Decline and revival

For 70 years, the 20th century saw an unprecedented decline in woodmanship. With increasing rapidity, the markets for small wood decreased in the face of alternative materials, cheap imports, the mechanization of manual jobs and changes in farming practices. Coppicing rotations lengthened as less wood was required, the faggoting was burned, dead stools were not replaced, and more timber was grown to the detriment of the underwood. Hard times there had been before, but on this occasion, unforgivably, woodlands were destroyed by grubbing or coniferization, and only a core of coppices whose products still enjoyed some demand continued to be managed with little change.

Then in the 1970s concern about the destruction of the environment became increasingly a public issue which stemmed the destructive thrust of farming and forestry policies. Subsequently attention has focused on the need for sustainable growth, renewable resources and ways of reducing agricultural surpluses. For many of our woodlands this meant a revival in their management: copses quietly neglected for 50 years or more were cut over again; some traditional crafts enjoyed strong demands; new uses for uses for underwood were sought; and traditional workers were joined by both conservationists and a new band of green woodworkers following the lead of enthusiasts such as Mike Abbott in England and Drew Langsner and Roy Underhill in America.

Coppice stools in ancient woodland.

The woodman’s life

To be a woodman

Cutting wood is a winter job, so providing sufficient material to last all year required working all the daylight hours from October to March. Most woodmen rose by moonlight, for to start early at the copse usually meant either a long walk, or at best a bicycle ride. To ease this burden many left their heavier tools secreted under leaves or behind a certain stool, since it is no fun riding a bike while carrying a felling axe!

Wages were similar to agricultural rates, with the benefit of fewer hours at weekends and the perk of free wood, but self-employed men could earn considerably more, depending how long and hard they grafted. Except in the largest woodlands, where men worked in teams, woodmen enjoyed a solitary existence. But none found it lonely, because working in a woodland is a great joy and never boring: warm in winter, cool in summer, a place of ever-changing beauty with each season, and always full of life.

Most woodmen started young, working in the coppice from the age of eight or nine with their father, when they could get away from school. Their training was long and slow, starting with the most basic skills, never being allowed to move on until their father was satisfied. There was only one way to do the job – their father’s way (and grandfather’s) – with speed as essential as accuracy. Gradually they would be allowed to make a part of the hurdle, besom or whatever, with their father still doing those parts critical to ensuring a saleable-quality product, until that marvellous day when the young woodman would make his first complete product, an event which may have taken him six or seven years to reach. Every woodman remembers that day.

Organization of the woodland trades

The most skilled woodmen, particularly hurdlemakers, were self-employed. Each year they purchased standing coppice, cut it, worked it up themselves, and then sold their products either to wood dealers or direct to customers. The remainder were employees either of small factories making wooden products, or of estates that managed their own woodlands. Most products were supplied to local markets, which, with the exception of firewood, were heavily dependent on farming incomes and the weather. Good years meant a strong demand for hurdles, fencing and wooden tools; bad years, a shortage of work and craftspeople undercutting one another’s price to get a living.

This lack of organization within the woodland trades was the seed that hastened their demise. As individuals, woodmen could neither control the minimum price of their products, nor stop a flood of imports by moving products around the country to meet local demand when sales suddenly increased. Fitzrandolph and Hay highlighted these problems in 1925 in their Survey of The Rural Industries of England and Wales, but failed to break the stubborn independence of centuries, and only thatchers and chestnut fencing makers successfully learned the lesson by forming trade associations which sustained their markets. In America, where specialized craftspeople were fewer, this problem was less severe.

The relevance of woodmanship today

Working in a woodland today is rather different. The hours are slightly less onerous, four-wheel drive vehicles make transport easier, while items such as hurdles and thatching rods attract premium prices. And increased leisure has led many to use their recreation time working to ‘conserve’ a local woodland. For those new to woodlands, woodmanship has some pointed lessons.

1 Its lore and methods are the product of practical experience, honed by use. Do not re-invent the wheel.

2 Be prepared to serve your apprenticeship. Go slowly. Get each step right before you move on, and seek advice from those who really know.

3 Think like a woodman – long-term. A coppice woodland is an infinitely renewable resource if managed properly and with forethought. Treat it accordingly.

4 Any woodman’s responsibility is to pass on to future generations woodland in good heart; a steady market coupled with good management are the best guarantees of this.

2

THE RAW MATERIALS

Every species growing in the coppice has its individual character. Some properties are shared – for example, you can wind a good withe from hazel, willow, birch or elm – but many are quite singular to a particular species, such as the resilience of ash or the durability of chestnut. Craftspeople match these properties to the specific needs of every product they make, which is why they work so well, and why this wisdom is just as essential today as it was a century or more ago.

7 Hazel has distinctive catkins borne on a hairy twig, a leaf with a distinct point, and nuts in autumn.

Hazel

Hazel is the finest coppice wood. Its traditional uses have been woven so deeply into the fabric of English rural life, that it has probably had a greater effect on the development of our civilization than any other tree. And it produces delicious nuts.

Hazel is most recognizable in February: the smooth-barked rods end in pale brown felty twigs, which bear the pendulous yellow ‘lamb’s tail’ catkins. The leaves emerge in late April and are broad, toothed and with a distinctive point at the tip (fig. 7).

A history of hazel

Pollen deposits trapped in peat bogs reveal that hazel colonized the British Isles naturally some 8–10,000 years ago. Its normal habit is that of a small coppice tree, for individual stems rarely live much longer than 60 years, and given sufficient light the stool will throw up new shoots as the older stems die.

Man has used hazel from the dawn of civilization, laying trackways with it in the Somerset levels around 4000 BC. Archaeologists have shown how Iron Age men used woven hazel to make their huts, and how Saxon coopers bound their casks with it. The demand for hazel increased rapidly, particularly for fencing and thatching, uses which remain important to this day.

In 1905 there were 500,000 acres of hazel-dominated coppice in Great Britain – some 25 per cent of all woodland. By 1965 only 94,000 acres remained, but thankfully good hazel still grows in southern England, where many of its associated crafts survive.

Properties of hazel wood

Hazel grows vigorously from its underground stool, throwing up a dense crop of rods that can grow 1.5m (5ft) in their first year. It grows best spaced no more than 2.1m (7ft) apart in order to draw the rods up straight and prevent too many lateral shoots developing, a density easily maintained by heeling-in seeds or plashing rods (see Chapter 3). Hazel wood is at its prime between seven and twelve years old: the rods are small enough to rive and work easily, and the spray grows flat and fan-shaped, making perfect pea sticks. Beyond this age it becomes twisted, knotted and of little value.

Traditional uses for hazel coppice

AGE

PRODUCT

6–12 years

pea sticks; flower and tomato stakes; bean rods; bonds; thatching wood; wattle hurdles; fascines; faggots; barrel hoops; wattle rods for houses; sticks; ethering rods; clothes props; pheasant traps; sheep feeders; rick pegs; crate rods; withes.

12–15 years

gate hurdles; rake handles; rustic poles; hedging stakes; morris staves; crate heads.

>15 years

firewood; charcoal.

Hazel is the best of all woods to work. It cuts easily from the stool with saw or billhook, is kind to handle, and rives superbly either radially or tangentially. And by twisting a rod its fibres can be separated, allowing it to be wound or knotted.

Hornbeam

In the south of England hornbeam is the tree for firewood, grown as ancient pollards in the great forests or as twisted poles in the coppice.

Superficially similar to beech, the smooth, grey bark of hornbeam has an irregular, fluted surface, the dark green leaves are toothed, and the fruit is borne on a curious wing composed of three fused arms (fig. 16b, here).

A coppiced hornbeam in Oxfordshire.

A history of hornbeam

In England hornbeam is confined to the south east. Although presumed native, it has not been identified before Neolithic times, and this may account for its limited distribution since it is not a tree that spreads rapidly.

How hornbeam was managed is poorly recorded, but it was rarely treated as timber because it is difficult to work. It does make excellent firewood and charcoal, however, for which coppicing or pollarding give a regular supply of suitable material, and it seems likely that some hornbeam woods were planted in order to supply London with the fuel it required.

Properties and utilization

Although hornbeam coppices well, bearing several poles on each stool, it does grow slowly, only 0.9m (3ft) in the first year. This is perhaps because the wood is so dense, among the hardest native woods. Since it does not rive easily, rarely grows straight, and lasts poorly out of doors, its uses have been limited.

Traditional uses for hornbeam coppice

AGE

PRODUCT

20–30 years

gear teeth and pulleys; firewood; charcoal.

8 Sweet chestnut has long spear-like leaves that rot very slowly, and produces nuts in a spiky case.

Sweet chestnut

Chestnut is the most durable of any coppice wood, oak included. This, together with the ease with which it cleaves, has made it the supreme material for any sort of fencing, even attracting a British Standard!

Sweet chestnut is most easily recognized from the leaves: 15cm (6in) long, spear-shaped, and with a distinctive saw-toothed edge (fig. 8), they emerge from smooth, oval buds borne on stout, brown twigs. The coppice poles are grey, with smooth thin bark.

A history of chestnut