Mallinson Ltd - woodwork courses in Dorset. Perfect short breaks for everyone.

September has felt like a real month of contrasts for me. Perhaps I need to get out more. First off, of course, there were the September courses and the glorious late summer sunshine we've been enjoying down here in the new woodland workshop. Really wonderful - and such a change after the grey 'high summer' months.

Talking of grey, as mentioned last month, I was in London for a few days (a rare event for me now), at the Decorex show where we officially launched my 'Wishbone Stool'. I thought the show went well but I have to say I'm more and more struck by the contrast between town and country ... and no prizes for guessing which I prefer.

Away from London again, but still with plenty of hustle and bustle, there was also the River Cottage Festival, where I had a demonstration stand. It was great fun and well attended - highly recommended - and, as always, it was good to meet up with old friends and new faces at both events.

By the way, in case anyone was thinking otherwise, we're not all low-tech down here 'in the sticks' - there's even a video of me at work at River Cottage HQ, up on YouTube.

However, as the clip also demonstrates, while 'country' doesn't have to equal 'low tech', in my case 'woodworker' certainly does equal 'lacking in media training'. Natural interviewee I am not! (Just how many times can I use the word 'wood'?!)

Price Rises, What Price Rises?

Last month I mentioned forthcoming price rises in our online tool shop. It was not a scare story! However, for whatever reason, I have not heard anything more on this front from our suppliers and so there will still be at least a couple more weeks at the old prices. If you are planning on buying some tools, a fire pit or anything else, now remains a good time ... the rises will doubtless happen sooner or later.

New Walls

Aside from all the courses and shows, this month we have been building up the log walls in the workshop areas. As I write one of the two main workshops is now completely 'winter proof', and with three full courses coming up at the end of October I shall have both workshops fully prepared for anything inclement within the next couple of weeks.

New Weapons!

As well as walls, we've also been making a trebuchet. This has been great fun, and many thanks to one of our past guests, Nigel Butcher, for his advice and drawings for this project. OK, in theory it's for a school medieval reinactment my eldest son Jasper is involved in (some of you might remember some of his roller coasters in the grounds at Mangerton and now at Higher Holditch Farm) but I can't help but feel 'trebuchet building' could be a great course, or maybe part of our private booking days. The trebuchet, that essential tool for company bonding, family fun or a hen night celebration ...

New Course Dates - First Sight

And although 'trebuchets' don't feature (yet), we've also now sorted out the course dates for the coming year. You'll notice that all of our adult courses are in school term time next year and that we will be running courses from March through to November in 2009.

This is a preview for newsletter recipients. Some of our more popular courses do fill very quickly and so, as a small 'thank you' for reading, I thought it would be good to give regular readers 'first sight' before publishing them on the main website and shop. As ever, if you have a particular date in mind book soon.

(For this online version, the new dates will be published on this page shortly.)

And that's it for another month. As always, thanks for reading.

Guy and the team

Tree of the month - Sweet Chestnut - Castanea sativa

This lovely tree with its large, glossy, serrated leaves and spiralling bark has something of the exotic about it when it is encountered growing in an English woodland. Although now well enough established in Britain to be considered an honorary native, it originates from the warmer, drier Mediterranean climate, and was probably introduced over here by the Romans. Although the sweet chestnut flourishes in Britain, the seeds do not mature and germinate as successfully here as they would in their warmer native habitat, except in the milder climate of the southeast. The tree is widespread despite this through being widely planted, variously in parks and gardens for its decorative qualities, in woodlands as a coppice or nut crop, and in deer parks, where the nuts were considered a good food for deer.

By the time the sweet chestnut was introduced, the practice of coppice management of woodland was long established (since prehistoric times) both in Britain and in Italy. Records from as early as 1AD referred to the different coppice rotations in use in Italy, where sweet chestnut was managed to provide large timber for buildings and boats as well as smaller grade for firewood. As in the woods today, cutting the trees on a rotation varying from seven and thirty-five years depending on the intended usage ensured that a constantly regenerating supply of timber was available. The Romans carried on this management and usage in Britain, preferring to import a tree they were familiar with and which, they noted, thrived in Britain and produced a useful timber crop more quickly than the native oaks.

Sweet chestnut was also one of the species commonly used in the production of charcoal for the manufacture of metals, in processes later developed and refined by the Roman invaders. As industrial processes developed, the making of iron, steel and glass all depended on a steady and readily available supply of charcoal from large areas of healthy, well-managed woodland at close proximity to the site of industry. This symbiotic relationship between industry and landscape ensured the maintenance of large tracts of woodland which were rightly regarded a valuable and renewable resource, until developments in the industrial processes phased out charcoal, and led to a loss of vigour and species diversity in woodlands across the country. Luckily the more recent enlightened view of woodland management has seen a resurgence of coppicing, and an appreciation of its wildlife and amenity value.

The timber, which is strong and resistant to wet conditions, is now most commonly used for paling fencing, made from cleft coppiced timber. Interestingly, as cleaving still cannot be done satisfactorily by machine, this job is done by hand before the cleft poles are wired together The heartwood of sweet chestnut is much more durable than the sapwood, so when the cleft wood is used for outdoor applications like post-and-rail fencing, it is always assembled with the heartwood uppermost, as it is more resistant to the weather. In earlier times, sweet chestnut wood was used to make barrels, coffins and even water pipes; huge areas of sweet chestnut coppice in Kent and Sussex produced hop poles for thousands of acres of hop fields until they were superseded by a system of growing hops up wires. As well as timber, the sweet chestnut also provided a valuable source of familiar food to the Romans, who ate the nuts; both roasted and also ground into a protein-rich flour which was mixed with milk to make pollenta, a peasant food still eaten in Italy today. The nuts, which are produced in groups of one to three within a spiny case, rarely ripen successfully in the cooler climate enjoyed by Britain nowadays, and are in fact more often blown from the trees by autumn gales while not fully ripe.

Sweet chestnuts also provided one of the products produced from the well-managed woodland since the earliest times: the peeled bark of a range of trees was a valuable by-product, yielding tannic acid which was essential in the process of tanning leather before it was largely replaced by chemicals. Oak was valued for this use as it has the strongest tannins, but sweet chestnut is also a good source. Mace tells me that if he is turning or working sweet chestnut, he must be very careful to clean his tools, as the tannins will otherwise react with the metal, corroding the blades and staining them black.

For an introduced species, the sweet chestnut has proved very hardy in the British climate, and some specimens have lived to a very ripe age, taking spectacular, twisted, sculptural form. As would be expected from a tree so widely coppiced, some of these ancient specimens, notably the Tortsworth Chestnut in Gloucestershire, have formed woodland glades of their own, with the original trunk surrounded by branches, which have fallen and taken root. Interestingly, in researching this tree I found that there was little folklore associated with it, something I have noted with other introduced species. As sweet chestnut was introduced so early in British history, it leads me to surmise that the folklore stories, rituals and beliefs associated with so many of our native trees must have their roots in pagan prehistory, even if later belief systems adopt and adapt them to their own ends.

Carolyn Brightwater