Date 15-16 March 2025 (2 Days)
Price £200
Maximum number of places 12
Book Email hello@ellekerswood.co.uk or ring Dan Watson on 07970 116515
Course Details
Using hand-tools and traditional techniques this practical course will explore coppice management and restoration of neglected coppiced woodland and show how it can be carried out in a way that generates saleable products and a richer and more vibrant eco-system.
Our aims are:
· To show how to use hand tools to dismantle coppice ‘stools’ safely.
· Inform how and when carry out the next coppicing cycle.
· To show how regrowth can be encouraged and protected.
· To identify useful and valuable products and materials.
Almost all British hardwood trees coppice. This means that they will grow back vigorously, generally with more useful form, when cut low to the ground in the winter months. Coppicing can be practiced on a single tree in a garden, a small copse in the corner of a field, or at scale as part of a larger productive woodland-management system.
Like many of the craft skills associated with it, coppicing has been practiced for thousands of years. The Sweet Track, an ancient timber causeway in Somerset built by our ancestors 6,000 years ago (in part using coppiced materials) will not have been a first! The people who made so much of what they needed by hand, long before the advent of steel or power tools, were keenly aware of the value of clean straight roundwood.
The course at Ellekers Wood will focus on giving you the confidence to plan, tackle and succeed in managing and restoring your own coppice as well as an understanding of the wider benefits for woodland ecology.
Catering:
For all courses, a hearty, healthy lunch is provided (please let your tutor know of any dietary requirements when booking), along with tea, coffee and water. Breakfast and evening meal is self-catered, with firewood and charcoal-based cooking available.
We also provide firewood, brew-kit, washing up and cooking facilities, crockery and cutlery.
Guests should bring; barbecue food or pans for cooking on a fire for breakfast and evening meals.
Facilities:
Facilities include covered workshop spaces, an undercover outdoor cooking set-up, comfortable compost toilet, plenty of loo roll, and handwashing. A good stone track leads to the the wood where there is space to park, please keep speed under 10mph.
Tutor Bios
With well over half a century of coppice manage experience between them, Geoff Norton and Dan Watson have a wealth of knowledge and expertise to share.
Geoff began coppicing around the same time as Dan about 30 years ago. A bored market-trader at the time, he was inspired by a hurdle-making demonstration at a woodland-craft show. Within a year or so he established Yorkshire Hurdles with his pole-lathe turner partner Angela. He became involved in coppice restoration in a number of neglected woods, selling woodland materials alongside various greenwood products, including cleft-chestnut fencing and oak gates.
More recently Geoff trained and qualified as an integrative humanistic counsellor, working in private-practice and within a local community-counselling service. He is currently in the process of drawing the two sides of his work together in developing and delivering eco-therapy courses.
Dan’s experience of ancient woodland restoration began in the 1990’s with his work as a charcoal burner and hurdle-maker. He also sold hedging stakes for hedge-laying and other woodland materials before adding sawmilling and timber framing to his skill set. He is a bowl carver and continues to take commissions for outdoor furniture, sculptural features and bespoke rustic fencing. @dwwoodlandproducts
Dan is the north of England agent for woodlands.co.uk (woodland sellers for conservation and leisure) and is the owner/manager of Ellekers Wood, a plantation on ancient woodland site and venue for this course.