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

In case you were wondering, no, you didn't miss last month's newsletter. What with back-to-back courses, a trip to the Houses of Parliament and more besides ... (see below), it just didn't happen. I'm making up for it this month with a slightly longer than normal edition.

Perfect Christmas Gifts (1)

Some of you will have received a course as a gift; some will have given one as a present already ... either way, the feedback that we've had to date has been very much that a course gift certificate is a very appreciated present, whether for a woodworker, artist or someone who just needs to get away from it and recharge some stressed brain cells!

Quite scarily, the last posting date this year (18th December) is not that far away. So if a course gift certificate sounds like a good idea to you (to give or receive), now's a good time to get the wheels in motion. Between now and the 18th will fly by. You can buy online or by phone/post - though online is quicker.

Perfect Christmas Gifts (2)

And if you're thinking that anything in our tools/equipment section would be good to give or receive then it gets worse! We'll need orders in by the 10th December to allow time to import any of the more unusual items.

And talking of equipment, we're sorry but we've just heard that the suppliers of the fire-pits we use in the woodland workshop and sell are now out of stock until the spring. However, if you would like to be added to the waiting list please drop me an email.

New Five Day Master-Class

You read it here first! New on the calendar for next year is a master-class. Very much in response to demand, this is a five day course to make your own shaving horse and pole lathe to take home with you.

This course is intended for guests who have attended either our pole lathe or stool making course, or people with similar green woodworking experience. The course dates are September 21st-25th and the cost is £475 + VAT, to include lunches and all materials, and also the custom made hardware/metalwork.

Over the years, many guests who have 'got the bug' have expressed an interest in coming back to make their own horse and lathe, not least because of the 'chicken and egg' issue that crops up (i.e. the need to have a shaving horse to make a shaving horse!). So, if you are keen come and join us, but please do book early. Places are strictly limited to 10 and we're only planning one of these courses in 2009. I'm really looking forward to it already.

Coppicing And Planting Underway

Now the sap is well and truly down we have taken our first steps in managing our new home in the woods. We have started coppicing the hazel (more next month on this) and the first tree was planted during a recent course. This was not really planned, but came about as one of our guests (Jill Brown) kindly brought along a Rowan (Mountain Ash) that she had been looking after but had nowhere to plant at home.

According to folklore Rowan was used as a protection against witches and so it seemed particularly appropriate that we planted it on Halloween. Many thanks to Jill for this; it joins a few existing Rowans already in the wood. This is the first of many new trees that we've planned for, and later this month we'll be planting 150m of new hedge too.

Marshwood Vale Magazine

A big thank you to Victoria Byrne for her fantastic write-up of our new charcoal drawing course in the Marshwood Vale Magazine - this can be seen on the 'In The News' section of the website, and this excellent magazine has a website that is well worth a visit.

My only regret is that the magazine's editors did not include my personal favourite picture of Victoria on the course - sporting a fine (accidental) charcoal moustache. So, I just had to include it here.

Sorry Victoria!

Eco Awards Awarded

Earlier this week I was dragged out of the woods to collect my 'Green Apple Gold Award' for eco-tourism at the Houses of Parliament. Suits and ties - ugh, I hate them. It's nice to be recognised but I was very pleased to scuttle back to the woodland workshop and get back into some sensible clothes.

Design Competition Success

We have also been fortunate this month to be declared a joint winner of the Dick Tools (yes it's true) 'Design A Chair Competition' for my Wishbone Stool. Please visit their site for more information.

Dangerous Machines For Big Boys

I admit I was surprised by the very enthusiastic response to the trebuchet that we made last month for our boys' school medieval re-enactment - so I have included a couple of pictures of it finished.

My neighbours are now very relieved that we have dismantled it and there is no longer a chance of a smelly cow being launched over their hedge.

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

Guy and the team

Tree of the month - Hedges

As autumn draws on, the retreating foliage reveals the bones of the landscape, and a defining and very British feature: the native hedgerow. Here in Dorset, hedges crowd along the edges of the lanes and slice across the land beyond, dividing hillsides and valleys into neat fields; within these fields now that the crops are cut and cleared, can often be seen the ghosts of old hedge lines which once divided the fields into still smaller areas, but were later grubbed up in the headlong pursuit of mechanization and efficiency, when the increasing size of farm machinery demanded larger fields to work in.

Hedges are a strong landscape feature across Britain, except in areas where stones for walling are a more plentiful local crop. They are also bound up with our social history; living time-lines and indicators of historic land use and power in Britain. Since earliest times, hedges of both dead and 'quick' or live wood have been used to safely contain domestic animals and delineate cultivated areas; the earliest written reference in Britain dates from AD547, but there is also record of hedges encountered by Julius Caesar as he crossed mainland Europe, which closely resemble the style of current day laid hedges.

Some of the oldest hedgerows in Britain are thought to be remnants of ancient woodlands, left on the fringes of land cleared for fields. These would have been retained to provide shelter and forage for domestic animals as well as ongoing supply of food, firewood and valuable timber for the farmer. Ancient hedgerows are identified through their more natural relationship to landscape features and contours, and through their diversity of species, which may include many uniquely woodland-dwelling species.

A fascinating study by Dr Max Hooper, described in the 1974 publication Hedges, by Pollard, Hooper and Moore, suggests that the age of a hedgerow can be accurately assessed from the number of different species it contains; by looking at 227 hedgerows accurately dated from historical documents, he concluded that each species within a 30-yard length of hedgerow represented 100 years of age. (Of course, the many new mixed native 'heritage' hedges planted as a result the recent resurgence of the hedgerow will make this method less reliable, as time goes by).

While the hedge remnants from native woodland were naturally species-rich to begin with, the many thousands of miles of hedging planted in the wake of the Enclosure Acts were much more uniform, being made up, typically of quick-growing hawthorn plus one other species; the 'quick thorn' produced a boundary that was both vigorous, durable and secure, and the second species would be planted intermittently and allowed to grow on for timber.

As the massed planting driven by successive acts of Parliament began to take effect in the British countryside, hedges took on a new role in defining the boundaries of newly-asserted individual ownership on land that had previously been held in common. Fortunes were made by the nurseries that sprung up to fulfil the sudden and huge demand for hawthorn saplings to plant the estimated 200,000 miles of hawthorn hedging that permanently changed both the appearance and the land usage of the British countryside. As well as being uniform of species, the hedges were also laid out with little regard for the lie of the land, the straightness of the hedge-line particularly noticeable in spring, when they slice through the landscape in a froth of creamy blossom.

Hedges are a man-made boundary requiring continued periodic intervention to prevent them from turning, as they would prefer to do, into a line of trees. Nearby to us in Dorset on Powerstock Common, there are some magnificent hedges of gnarled, twisted, trees probably not touched since the inter-war years. Their great, moss-covered limbs grow horizontally and low to the ground as a result of hedge-laying work last carried out many decades ago.

Nowadays, hedges, especially those by the roadside, are trimmed with a tractor-mounted flail. This looks brutal when it is first done, and the sharp, thorny twigs that litter the ground after the event can be punishing to the tyres for passing cyclists, or even motorists, but although sensitive flailing does no harm to a well maintained hedge, landowners are increasingly appreciating the value of a well-laid hedge to maintain a strong and stock-proof boundary.

Hedge laying is traditional winter work for the woodsman, carried out from October to March when the trees are dormant, and the sap is down. Mace is about to start work on the first of this season's hedge laying - so I'll let him tell you a little more about it:

The earlier in the season that the work is carried out, the better the regeneration will be the following spring, owing to developing buds having several months head start. Hence, prestige or highly visible hedge-laying contracts are often given priority over their more workaday agricultural cousins. Local hedging competitions (often alongside the ploughing match) are still the early season market whereby many a contract is awarded.

The regionally distinctive styles that have emerged over the centuries are an often overlooked totem of regional distinctiveness and agricultural practice. For example, the local-to-us Dorset 'flat-and-low-with-two-wide-lines-of-planting-laid-into-the-middle' style, with hazel (wants to grow up, not across) being the main species. Uncharitably described as a 'biological trip hazard' , it is actually a remarkably productive shelter belt that not only provides a barrier that sheep and deer are reluctant to pick their way through and a zone in which small game can find food and shelter, but also provides a ready supply of hazel rods for the production of hurdles (traditionally an agricultural necessity, rather than middle class garden feature) and other products, firewood, 'lop and top' for fodder and faggots (the peasantries entitlement to fuel) and a regular source of rural 'cut and come again' employment for the communities that were supported by farms and estates prior to mobile mechanised farming.

By comparison, in the harsher and colder climes of only slightly further North, where cattle provided the mainstay, the initially labour intensive Midlands 'pleachers-laid-at-45°-with-vertical-stakes-and-woven-hazel-ropework-binding-along-the-top' style, consisting of predominantly Hawthorn, proved to be superior. The Midland hedge forms an immediately rugged barrier. Living stems (pleachers) are cut partially through and woven, basket-like along the field boundary. Topped with Hazel or Willow binding (heathering) the upright stakes are tied together, thus securing the hedge against the effects of bullocks using their horns to 'lift' the hedge apart. Even when freshly laid, the dynamic strength of this style is phenomenal - it might wobble when pushed but is flexible, tough, durable (with occasional maintenance a Midland style hedge only needs laying every 15 - 25 years) and is easily able to withstand two tons of bovine scratching an itch against it. Alternatively, it forms an immediate post-enclosure thorny barrier to revolting peasantry!

Social exclusion aside, arguably the single most important role of hedgerows today is that of ecological habitat. An established, maintained and subsequently varied hedgerow provides a wealth of different habitat zones (exterior, canopy, stem, ground, subterranean) and also roles (shelter, food, passage, landmark feature) as well as a genetic seed bank (96% of the UK's pre- Dutch-elm disease Elm genetic diversity is held in regularly maintained layered hedgerows) and a physical cultural connection with our predecessors.

You can't mechanically replicate or mass produce a well laid hedge. It is the accumulation of generations of hard learned thorny know-how. A true legacy.

Carolyn & Mace Brightwater

Mace is currently booking this winter's hedge laying, and consulting for future contracts.

E-mail: greenwood@brightwater.org.uk