February 2010

In this issue:

• The Power Of Telly!
• Love The Telly!
• Going, Going ...
• ... Coming
• You Heard It Here First
• Ongoing Coverage
• Reading Matter
• Chair Makers
• Parachute Shelter Making
• Tree Of The Month - Hazel (revisited)

Wow! Television is a powerful thing ... it's been stunningly hectic here since Mastercrafts with Monty Don first aired on the 12th February with the episode featuring green woodworking. Two immediate things come out of the experience.

1/ The Power Of Telly!

I want to say loud and clear that we are very, very grateful for and happy with the Mastercrafts programme. However, what's really surprised me is how many people now think we only teach guests how to make green wood chairs, and that the course is difficult, competitive, and lasts at least a week, maybe even six weeks! That's not the case at all! The reality is quite different.

For starters, our courses aren't competitive. They are designed to be achievable by everyone, regardless of ability and experience. What I really want everyone to come away with is the feeling of having had a lot of relaxing fun. Most courses last for two days, (with just a couple running for five) and so they make perfect short breaks. You don't need to use up a year's annual holiday to come on one! And we don't just teach chair-making. In fact we have a whole range of courses for adults:

• Carving A Wooden Bowl
• Pole Lathe & Green Woodworking
• Totem Pole Carving
• Make A Chestnut Garden Gate
• Building A Willow Garden Basket
• Making & Drawing With Charcoal
• Primitive Pottery
• Basic Bushcraft
• Make A Pole Lathe & Shaving Horse (five day)
• Make A Chair From A Tree (five day)

and three designed specifically for children, lasting just one day:

• Children's Green Woodworking
• Children's 'Wild Child' Adventures
• Children's Basic Bushcraft

So, while the trainees on Mastercrafts might have been here for six weeks with the focus on making a chair, there's a lot more to our Woodland Workshop than that.

The second thing I'd like to say is -

2/ Love The Telly!

However, those misconceptions aside, I am really, really pleased with the programme and the interest it's generated, in both what we get up to here in the Woodland Workshop and in green woodworking generally. It's done more to get the message across about what we're all about than I'd have dared to hope for.

Of course, with all that interest there have been plenty of knock-ons too, as I'll try to outline below. There were some 2.7 million people watching the show on the night I'm told, and believe me, that much exposure makes a difference!

Going, Going ...

As regular readers of this newsletter will know, I'm often saying 'book now before it's too late'. Well, I'm saying it again now ... At the time of writing two courses are completely full and several only have one or two places left. It really does feel like it's 'going, going ... gone!' time.

Places on courses are always strictly limited and rest assured this will continue to be the case, so it really is true that once it's full, it's full. The last thing I want to do is lose the 'feel' of our courses - nice, small groups relaxing in a lovely woodland setting and having fun.

As a result of the interest, we've been adding six new dates to existing courses and these are now all on the web site here.

However, even with these additions, if you fancy coming down this year I'd urge you to book up soon.

... Coming

Eagle-eyed regular readers might have noticed some new course names in the list above. I'm pleased to say that along with new dates for existing courses, we've also four new courses starting in the coming weeks - two for adults and two for children. These are:

• Primitive Pottery
• Basic Bushcraft
• 'Wild Child' Adventures
• Children's Bushcraft

I think the titles say what they're about - but the full details are on the respective 'course details' pages linked-to above. I hope they prove a good addition to the range we already offer. There are lots of things to do in the woods!

You Heard It Here First

As well as reassuring regular readers and previous guests that all this exposure isn't going to change how we do things, I also want to stress that this newsletter will continue to be the prime source for updates, despite our recent grappling with the new-fangled Twitter, Facebook and Blogger!

The 'running' order for our updating process for news about courses is normally -

1. get the web site up to date
2. announce them in the newsletter
3. then announce them via the Blog, Twitter and Facebook as appropriate.

Other news that's not time sensitive will often appear on the other 'channels' first, but subscribing to this newsletter means you'll always be up to speed about dates and courses.

Long Term Craftiness

I've also been pleasantly surprised by how many people have expressed an interest in how the Mastercrafts participants have fared since they were here. In response, we've set up a new page on the website dedicated to keeping track of the trainees and I am keeping in regular contact with Charlie, Tom and Sarah.

It is fascinating as well as very rewarding to see how their time here has influenced their subsequent career moves. We've also included some pictures that were taken 'behind the scenes' during filming.

Ongoing Coverage

I would like to thank everyone for their kind messages and phone calls about the programme after it was shown - it has meant a great deal to me. Feedback and follow-ups keep appearing too.

The programme itself is still available on iPlayer. Monty Don has appeared on both Radio 5 and Radio 4 in connection with the show.

The Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Mail all gave us favourable reviews, as did my old friend Sten Cummins (the Suburban Bushwacker) in his blog and the British Crafts blog too.

Reading Matter

As mentioned last month, there's a book to accompany the series and it includes a chapter about wood and goings-on in the Woodland Workshop. You can buy it here at a discount, which can't be bad! I think it reads really well and there are some lovely pictures too.

Chair Makers

I do still take on commissions in between running courses but there is remarkably little time in between courses in the coming months, and so it looks unlikely that I shall be taking on much more this year.

However, we are getting a lot of people ringing up wanting to buy chairs that are handmade from green wood. If you're one such person then please do have a look at David Saltmarsh's new site which I mentioned last month. This is the chair-maker who we visited during the Mastercrafts programme.

I would also like to recommend one other maker who has been carrying on the tradition of Ernest Gimson and makes fantastic chairs by hand.

In my view Lawrence Neal's chairs represent fantastic value and, as a traditional craft workshop, he deserves all the support and recognition he can get. Visit his web site here.

Parachute Shelter Making

And finally for this issue, it's not been all Mastercrafts-related activity here. In amongst it all, the winter Woodland Workshop development work continues with a new parachute shelter for cleaving and splitting on rainy day courses.

This is probably the MK10 design of our shelters and, as ever, each time we put one up we learn a bit more and simplify. I can't take all of the credit on this one though - the design is based on an idea by Jasper (my eldest son) to hang the parachutes from a central 'mast' and to tension it with a large metal ring (or two as it turned out).

I'm pleased to say it's been a great success: it stays dry and taught in the rain and just gently sways in the wind (despite being held down at three opposing points).

The whole structure took just one day to erect with Adam's invaluable help, together with a quad bike and pulleys to do the hoisting. If I'm honest I can't really call this one work - just adult den building I guess!

That's it for this month. Don't forget to catch the rest of the Mastercrafts series - all being shown (as far as I know) at 2100 on BBC2 on Fridays. Judging by the book, they all look like they'll be good viewing.

Thanks for reading.

Guy and the team

Tree of the Month: Hazel Revisited - Corylus avellana

Delving into the archives at Brightwater Towers, I was surprised to find that I've been writing this article for about 3 years now - how time flies! Looking back, some of the first trees I covered were the stalwarts of the English woodland; the native species, with a correspondingly long and interesting history of usage by the woodworkers, turners and bodgers of old.

They are, of course, equally important to the bodgers of new, and there is currently a buzz of media excitement surrounding this ancient craft, as well as the growing knowledge that when the economy finally sinks back into the primal swamp from whence it came it will be us, the chair-makers - and not DFS - that will be seating what remains of the nation. With all this in mind, and with apologies to any long-standing readers, this year I'm going to re-visit some of trees covered in earlier articles.

I first looked at hazel - Corylus avellana back in February 2007 after what had been, I was interested to read and remember, a very mild winter. Not so this year, but despite the cold, here in the south-west the hazel catkins still opened from stubby beginnings to glorious yellow tassels before the end of January; one of the earliest, most visible indications that the sap is stirring and Spring is on the way. Walking my younger daughter to and from school, we enjoyed the sight of a small clump of hazel which, from the end of January, erupted in a wonderful display of these yellow catkins that brightened even the grey-est morning. The catkins are the showy carriers of the male flowers only; hazel is monoecious, that is, bearing separate and different male and female flowers on the same tree at the same time. A much closer examination is required to reveal the female flowers, which show as tiny red tufts emerging from a bud along the branches; these are lovely, and worth taking the time to look for.

Hazel is a small, tough tree, one of the first to re-colonise Britain after the last Ice Age. As full tree cover slowly returned, hazel was crowded out to marginal sites, only reasserting itself as a tree of sunnier sites on the woodland edges as the land was opened up by early farmers. Although hazel will grow as a singled-stemmed tree, it has a strong tendency for multi-stemmed growth, and it is this growth habit which has been utilised since the earliest times through the development of a form of woodland management called coppicing. A hazel tree, cut down in the winter season, will, in the spring put all of its stored energy into producing not one new stem, but many. This crop of poles can be cut regularly - usually on a rotation of around 7 years - and the tree will continue to re-grow from the stump, called the stool, which will gradually increase in size and productivity. Incredibly, this process can prolong the life of the tree quite considerably; as a standard, the hazel will only live for about 60 years, but maintained in a coppice rotation, stools have survived and continued to produce a crop for up to 600 years.

So what was all this hazel managed and harvested for? From Medieval times, hazel has had so many uses that, wherever it grew, it was an indispensable crop. Homes were built with it; hazel was used to weave the hurdle framework for wattle and daub infill in timber-framed houses, and hazel spars were used, indeed still are, to pin the thatch of the roof in place. Hazel was also used to weave hurdles, the temporary fencing panels once widely used by farmers, to fold sheep on to grazing, or to confine them for lambing. The labour involved in making these panels, and the invention of the much cheaper, though less aesthetically-pleasing electric, plastic and wire fencing has resulted in hurdles being reinvented for the heritage and leisure markets, where their strength and hand-crafted beauty are still appreciated.

Another heritage use of hazel which is enjoying a revival for its aesthetic and wildlife benefits is in the rural craft of hedge-laying. Tractor-flailing a hedge is the most common treatment of farmland and roadside hedging, and, although brutal-looking, does not do a bad job. However, a hedge basically wants to be a line of trees, and even if trimmed or flailed regularly, will tend to become thin and gappy at the bottom. Traditional hedge-laying reinvigorates the hedge, which will regrow into a tight, stock-proof boundary. On a mixed or hawthorn hedge, hazel stakes are driven in at regular intervals to provide a solid framework, and hazel binders (long, thin whips) are used to twist into a rope-top to secure the whole.

This winter season, Mace has been hedge-laying in this style, and also in the local Dorset style, which is somewhat different: here the entire hedge is made of hazel, growing on a bank which is formed as the drainage ditches are dug and re-dug each side of the hedge, with the spoil going to earth up the hedge. This style of hedge, which Mace also terms a 'biological trip hazard' would have earned its keep on many levels: properly maintained, as a low, broad, twiggy hedge-and-ditch combination, it would have formed a boundary that animals were reluctant to cross; then as the hazel re-grew it would have provided a fodder crop, and eventually a source of straight grown hazel poles. Thus, the scarcity of coppice woodland in West Dorset is explained - it is all in the hedges.

Much of the hazel coppice in Britain was neglected and left to go out of rotation as industrialisation and changing farming practices changed the land use and took away the market for coppice products. But the tide is turning, and across the country neglected coppice is slowly being returned to productivity. Sometimes this is for wildlife, as rare species such as the dormouse and the nightingale thrive in managed coppice; other benefits include the flush of flowers on the forest floor due to the higher light levels. Coppice is also worked commercially once more, although the competition from products from other countries is tough - a local coppice worker here produces thatching spars, and he can price-match the cost of spars imported from Poland, but only just.

Working outside as I do, it is easy - and wonderful - at this time of the year to discover the early signs of spring: fresh green spikes of emerging bulbs; perennial plants nosing up through the earth; the buds fattening on the trees. For most of these small awakenings you have to get close to the action. Hazel, growing in woodlands and hedges, on roadsides and wasteland, offers an exuberant, large-print version, accessible to everybody.

© Carolyn Brightwater
carolyn@brightwater.org.uk