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

Last month saw us hosting a very enjoyable custom event for Big Fish Design. Twenty designers came down from London for their Christmas event and had a great day of making presents and two totem poles that are now raising eyebrows back in the reception of their Chelsea offices!

Twenty is the largest group we've entertained to date and we are now comfortably set up for special business/group events of this size (or smaller).

Interestingly, with the current financial concerns, a day or two with us seems to be proving popular with businesses: it's more cost-effective than many of the alternatives and it's 'green' too. Of course, it's also something different - and all together it's perhaps a better reflection of the new era we're moving into. I like to think so!

Use Those Gifts

I am notorious for leaving my Christmas shopping to the last minute, but I have to take my hat off to the person who bought the last course gift certificate of the year at 10.00 p.m on Christmas Eve! I don't know if that shows an amazingly relaxed attitude or last minute desperation!

And talking of gifts - there are now lots of open gift certificates out there after Christmas. As always, if you have a date in mind then now is a good time to reserve your place. Once courses are full, they're full.

Meet The Neighbours

December also saw us hosting our own private drinks party on the evening of 20th for our local friends, It was a real pleasure to see the woodland workshop buzzing late into the night with 150 or so people kept warm with huge fires (and the inevitable local cider). We had numerous comments on how magical the woods looked with paths lit with hurricane lamps, the trees up-lit and fire flares reflecting in the pond. So no excuses now - the new workshop is maturing and it really is a great year-round venue!

Visit The Neighbours

This is the time of year for felling and our opportunity to source, sort and store the wood for next year's courses. I have been out on the quad bike today on the Forde Abbey estate where they have been thinning some sycamore and ash - perfect! It really could not be more locally sourced and it is just what we need. We have sorted out the best straight and clean lengths and look forward to working with such lovely fresh timber.

Incidentally, Forde Abbey is well worth a visit when you or your partner are next down here on a course or custom event. The estate borders our wood and as well as a wonderful medieval monastery, beautiful gardens and a nursery there is a fantastic pick your own fruit field there too - just be sure you get there before the Mallinson family - we are expecting a loyalty card next year!

http://fordeabbey.co.uk

Coppicing In The Cold

Mace ended last year and started the new carrying on with the coppicing and that's now nearly finished. It has been wonderful in the woods in the cold crisp weather but it certainly has been chilly - the pond froze over for the first time! It wasn't thick enough to skate on although that didn't discourage my three boys giving it a go ... once.

The winter site improvements are coming on well with the canvas shelter over the summer dining area now up and working well for warm but wet days, and the components are all ready to build our new compost loos. These will be ready for March.

That Photo Competition

My favourite guest's festive photo was sent in by John S, of his carved bowl full of walnuts.

It joins an ever growing number of pictures sent in for our picture competition. If you have been meaning to send in pictures and perhaps win a free course then don't leave it too late - there are only a couple of months left before judging.

Fire Balls Of Death

Apart from work we did enjoy a bit of time off between Christmas and the New Year. What do we do when not working in the woods? Well, by popular demand here is the much talked about 'fire balls of death' picture. Need I say any more other than that we also played a variation on this on New Year's eve - fireball hockey on a tennis court. Great fun for pyromaniacs!

(In case you are now feeling anxious about your forthcoming booking I must stress that we do not include either of these 'sports' on any of our public or private courses!)

In the Press

Dorset Life magazine has a two page feature this month on the woodland workshop following Sally Fitzharris's visit here last summer to carve a bowl. As ever, spreading the word of what we are up to is very much appreciated and valued, so a big 'thank you' to the magazine and particularly to Sally for writing and organising the feature.

» In The News

Ups and Downs

Finally, please note that we have been forced to increase the tools prices in response to the Euro/Pound exchange rate. It changed so much we would have been selling at a loss if we had not moved fast - strange times indeed. However, on a more positive note our courses are effectively cheaper this year than last due to the VAT change so it's not all bad!

That's it for this month other than to say, as always, thanks for reading.

Guy and the team

Tree of the Month: Yew - Taxus baccata

The dark days at the start of a new year, when the trees are leafless and spring feels a long way off, seems like a good time to take a look at one of our native evergreen trees. The Yew derives its name from the Celtic 'iw', one of the oldest tree names. In the Celtic belief system Yew is associated with death, but also with rebirth, and the endless cycle of transformation.

The slow-growing yew is at home in churchyards, where it can be left undisturbed; indeed many of the most ancient yews in Britain are found on church ground. Previously it had been supposed that these trees were early Christian plantings, and that the gloomy, poisonous foliage was a reference to human mortality; alternatively, others have made a case for this evergreen tree being planted as a potent symbol of everlasting life, but there is little in Christian literature to support either of these theories.

There are many questions unanswered about the ancient yews of Britain, and the debate is still ongoing to explain their association with churchyards, how these ancient trees fit within the Christian and earlier pagan belief systems, and whether the tree or the church was there first. It is known that the Yew was regarded as sacred in ancient religions across most of early Europe, and there is plenty of evidence that early Christians routinely adopted the sacred sites of older religions for their own places of worship, but nowhere else in Europe are yew trees so associated with churches.

Studies have indicated that the association of the yew with places of burial and ceremony in Britain goes back far beyond the advent of Christianity, and although almost all of the known ancient yew trees in Britain are growing in churchyards, many of these trees are now thought to considerably pre-date the building of the church. Part of the problem, however, is in the accurate dating of the most ancient yew trees. Most trees can be quite accurately dated by counting the growth rings, but once yew trees reach around 500 years old, their growth pattern changes. They lose their heartwood, and become hollow; growth is slowed, so that for long periods of time there will be almost no change in the size of the tree.

In an effort to date these most ancient trees, studies for the Tree Register of the British Isles have looked at, and added to, measurements which were begun in the seventeenth century of these churchyard yews. The oldest of these trees reach a girth of around 35 feet, and a researcher named Allen Meredith used archaeological and documentary evidence to age trees of 33 feet girth at 3,000 years, and those of 35 feet at around 5,000 years. These are indeed old trees, and the aura of their antiquity can be felt by any visitor.

So where to see these ancient giants? Yews prefer a chalk or limestone soil. In Britain they are largely located in central and south-eastern counties, and in Wales, and in the Lake District. They are so common in Hampshire that they are also known as 'the Hampshire weed'. Worth visiting is the yew woodland at Kingley Vale in Sussex, designated one of the country's first National Nature Reserves in 1952, and the ancient church-yard yews of Much Marcle in Herefordshire, and Hambledon in Surrey.

On the use of the wood, one of the more prosaic explanations for the prevalence of yews in churchyards is that they were planted there to protect the trees from browsing animals until their eventual use in the making of English long bows, but in fact the yew-wood for these bows was largely imported from Europe, as the best wood of English Yews was soon used up, and the stock that remained was found to be too brittle to make a good bow. For other uses, however, the wood is strong, dense and durable, and almost never rots. Yew taken from drained fens and bogs is still used to make furniture, as the wood is so dense that it emerges unharmed even after centuries of submersion. Yew wood polishes well, showing its natural colours of cream, pink, orange or red to perfection. In more everyday uses, a New Forest saying holds that a post of yew will outlast a post of iron in the ground.

The bark, foliage and seeds of the yew are all toxic, although the pink fleshy seed cap is sweet and edible, and loved by birds. Mace tells me that the yew is the most toxic tree on the planet, though I would not be surprised if there was something more lethal in Australia, which seems to be the natural home of all things deadly. The toxicity of the yew has recently been harnessed to produce the cancer drug Taxol, which is produced from yew clippings. These are mostly sourced from the fastigiate Irish Yew, which is the more restrained, upswept form, better suited to formal plantings, clipping and topiary than its sprawling, brooding English cousin.

Carolyn Brightwater