During the Middle Ages a system of woodland management grew up. I must say that it did not apply in forest. Forest is a legal term that nowadays denotes a wooded area, but in Mediaeval times it denoted an area where hunting rights were reserved by the king, and there are areas of forest today that are not remotely wooded and never were in recorded history. In the forest deer were allowed to run wild and so the thin shoots of coppiced tree would soon be eaten by them. Forest was at best woodland pasture disrupted by deer hunts.
Foresters became adept at the art of coppicing, and they worked according to a cycle for different trees.Hazel was cut every eight years, ash every fifteen and oak every twenty five. Beech could also be cut, but it is a tree that does not coppice well and so was not cut on a regular cycle. But before the poles were cut they were trained by being tied to prevent them from growing crooked and so being useless for tool handles. So they would be originally tied at the bottom to determine direction and successively new ties would be added so that the poles would be straight.
Willow coppice was also common in the British Isles, and if you have ever heard the Irish song Down by the Sally Gardens, the word sally gardens refers to the fact that some Irish villages used to have willow gardens to provide wood, which were regularly coppiced. Willow would grow well on the edges of the bogs that are common in parts of Ireland. Sally comes from the Latin name for willow, Salix.
Coppicing was performed in Spring. There as an art to the timing. Too early, while it was still cold, the young shoots would not have time to harden off before they faced frost; too late the sap in the tree was rising and the tree would suffer a wound that could damage its future health. Any, dormant shoots were better to work than shoots with sap in them.
Foresters would cut the poles and sell them on to turners, who would use traditional lathes to smooth the wooden poles into handles for tools. If you know anyone called Turner their ancestors were woodland craftsmen who often used coppiced wood to make tool handles.
There seem to have been advantages to having your woods coppiced, for the process encouraged biodiversity. The reason for this is that certain trees have a habit of dominating British woodlands. Oak is king, but beech can be quite aggressive in its growth. But as beech does not coppice well, cropping it for coppice allowed space in woodlands for other kinds of tree to grow, such as the small-leaved lime, which is a native British tree which has been struggling for habitat over the centuries. Coppicing also created glades that allowed the light that enabled wildflowers to flourish.
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Great info! I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have.
Indeed an interesting process, and quite useful.
Torver is the site of an annual fair that includes some Lakeland crafts, so it is possible that a local craftsperson is coppicing to produce the wooden parts of traditional tools. I know that there is a fellow in Dufton [not near Torver] who produces traditional wooden rakes, so there could be other craftspeople elsewhere in the Lakes using coppiced wood.
I believe so, yes just near a mill place so maybe a traditional craft place in the hamlet
At Torver were they actually practising coppicing? If so, I will be quite impressed, as we need to revive t.his old practice. I know that on my walks through the Lake District my gardener's eye spots the woods that show signs of having once been coppiced, but are now left to grow wild.
Writer artist
Thanks for the foraging comments. I love foraging and do leave much behind. Here where I live, the council have planted community orchards where we can all go and pick fresh fruits as and when we wish. But people do treat them responsibly. Thank goodness. We have apples. pears. plums. greengages. medlars and damsons just now.
I came across Coppicing when I was visiting Torver near Coniston in the English Lake District . It makes sense although I had never even given the idea any thought before then.
Thanks for this article. Excellent and well written as always .
I never heard of coppicing so thank you for a wonderfully educational article. Love the pics too!
How interesting. I have never heard of coppicing. It makes complete sense to allow the stump to continue to produce new growth.