Country Diary: Dorset
If you turn west off the Dorchester road out of Sherborne and head for Leigh, you are getting into the haunts of Thomas Hardy's Woodlanders and soon start to pass through mature woodland. Just beyond the long, low barns of Lower Stockbridge Farm, Big Oak Strip lies alongside the road on your left, and the ancient, twisted form of a notable individual survivor, the Stockbridge Oak, are close by.
Foresters are at work in Big Oak Strip and across the road in Holmbushes Wood, where I could see a figure high up in the treetops swinging lightly out on to a springy branch that leant over the road. I went past neat piles of cut wood towards a helmeted young man working with a band saw at ground level. He said the main object of their work was safety. On roads, footpaths and bridleways there could be danger from falling timber, so the landowner was obliged to cut out dead wood.
There was an enthusiast's light in his eye as he told me how this kind of wood might have been 150 years ago, with tall standard oak and ash to produce great timbers for shipwrights and builders, and a lower growth maybe of holly, but certainly of hazel, for hurdle making, charcoal and thatchers' spars. Each winter's work would have involved the coppicing of one section, cutting the young stems close to ground level so as to produce the new, straight growth of hazel that the craftsmen needed. A different section was worked each year so that rotation ensured a steady supply of the required lengths, and produced varying heights of low growth or understorey, creating habitat for a great variety of species.
Industrial development has done away with the need for large-scale work of this kind in the woodlands. Growth nowadays is likely to be more tangled and unregulated, and the woodlands places for ramblers and dog walkers, not men and women working with rough hands to maintain the rural economy. But my forester was not discouraged. He told me of the Dorset Coppice group that promotes the old craft, and said there was a revival of demand for traditional woodland products.
He had to break off to answer a call from high in the canopy near the Stockbridge Oak. Ropes were slung from the very tops, where two more figures, poised like midshipmen in the rigging, needed advice about where to cut. These were professional tree-climbers, earning a well-deserved living from a precarious occupation.
Foresters are at work in Big Oak Strip and across the road in Holmbushes Wood, where I could see a figure high up in the treetops swinging lightly out on to a springy branch that leant over the road. I went past neat piles of cut wood towards a helmeted young man working with a band saw at ground level. He said the main object of their work was safety. On roads, footpaths and bridleways there could be danger from falling timber, so the landowner was obliged to cut out dead wood.
There was an enthusiast's light in his eye as he told me how this kind of wood might have been 150 years ago, with tall standard oak and ash to produce great timbers for shipwrights and builders, and a lower growth maybe of holly, but certainly of hazel, for hurdle making, charcoal and thatchers' spars. Each winter's work would have involved the coppicing of one section, cutting the young stems close to ground level so as to produce the new, straight growth of hazel that the craftsmen needed. A different section was worked each year so that rotation ensured a steady supply of the required lengths, and produced varying heights of low growth or understorey, creating habitat for a great variety of species.
Industrial development has done away with the need for large-scale work of this kind in the woodlands. Growth nowadays is likely to be more tangled and unregulated, and the woodlands places for ramblers and dog walkers, not men and women working with rough hands to maintain the rural economy. But my forester was not discouraged. He told me of the Dorset Coppice group that promotes the old craft, and said there was a revival of demand for traditional woodland products.
He had to break off to answer a call from high in the canopy near the Stockbridge Oak. Ropes were slung from the very tops, where two more figures, poised like midshipmen in the rigging, needed advice about where to cut. These were professional tree-climbers, earning a well-deserved living from a precarious occupation.
Use the feedback form below to submit your comments.
Use the form below to email this article to your friends.
