3 - Coppice and Coppicing

A Country Year - Coppice and Coppicing.

February 6th to February 23rd

From The Yarmouth Independent E.W.P. (1925) - So far as the "woodland" is concerned. it is doubtless contributory to the eternal fitness of things that what is usually spoken of as a dead season of the year is, in reality, the period when the maximum of human life and movement goes on within the depths. This does not refer in any way to those sporting activities which reach their zenith as soon as the leaves have fallen, and a pheasant can be followed with the eyes far enough to give it 'law'; for those weeks from October to just beyond Christmas can scarcely be, with any justice whatever, called the dead season of the year, as, on large estates, some one or other of the belts or coppices is sure to be alive with the excitement of a "big shoot." But it refers specially to that part of the year when pheasant shooting is over, and the period sets in which immediately precedes the preparation for the next rearing season. Now is the time chosen for these operation having as their object the preparation of the copse wood and undergrowth of the "coppice" for its various uses. The sap has not yet commenced to flow, or, if it has, it is only in such measure as to ensure the ready separation of the oak-bark from the stems, and not in sufficient quantity to make the copse wood liable to rot or endanger its toughness. It is highly important that the "fell" should the full swing before this takes place; if it were delayed one disastrous effect would be, that the "stools" or "stubs," after being denuded of there growths, would bleed immoderately, and most probably fail from exhaustion.

These clearing operations, when carried out on any extended scale, will occupy many weeks, and present a very busy scene. In cutting down, each man takes his proportionate breadth of ground from which he is to clear the undergrowth; this he effects by taking each separate standard under the left arm and beaning it away from the direction of the blow, which must be delivered upward within an inch or two of the "stool" thus ensuring short "stubs" and cleans cuts, which a "sine qua non." When the "stool" has been cleared of its growths, these are carried and laid lengthwise, each bundle overlapping the previous one. The length of the row thus keeps pace with the length of the clearing. As his companions are each cutting a strip parallel with his, the cut undergrowth forms lying at equal distances from each other, the material being laid in the same direction as the rows run. This manner of laying is adhered to, for the reason that when sufficient cutting down has been done, it is easier to handle the fell when placed like this, than when it is laid side by side.

There is something peculiarly fascinating in watching, day by day, the progress of clearing any portion of a wood of its undergrowth. "For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed." For seven, eight, or nine years, according to the rapid growth, nature has been endeavouring to blot out the once familiar surface outlines. Rabbit burrows, which stared in all their nakedness, soon became invisible, then almost forgotten; eventually, after much cogitation, the "keeper" thinks he recollects that "there used to be a big burrow in the middle there somewhere." Certain spruce firs, which now stand out singly and distinctly among the oaks, only the other day, had to be cruised about for in the bewildering sea of undergrowth with varying success.

The selection and treatment of the different classes of wood largely depend upon the needs and demands of the immediate neighbourhood. Should the surrounding farms produce much corn and hay, then "Brotches" or "Stack Pegs," for thatching, are the chief items of manufacture, and all the hazel rods are cut out and tied in bundles to be eventually split for this purpose.

A Country Year - Coppice and Coppicing.

February 6th to February 23rd

Should it be a large sheep-farming district, then all the stouter poles are trimmed out for hurdle-making, and the lighter for stakes, to be driven in to the ground where the hurdles meet each other, to keep them in position; a stout ring is slipped over the head of each hurdle and the top of the stake; thus holding all three fast together.

The more slender oak wands of about 1 inch in diameter are trimmed out for "liggers"; these must be about 7 feet long, and are bound lengthwise over the straw thatch of the hurdles to keep it in position. Lambing folds are constructed under the shelter of some plantation or other, and consist of a sufficient number of pens, walled and roofed in with hurdles thatched in this manner, thus ensuring warmth and comfort for the ewes at this critical point in their and their owners' fortunes.

In localities where the wild rabbit is a feature to be taken into consideration, many of the shorter and stiffer rods of ash, oak, or hazel are in request as rabbit-net stakes, either by the warreners when netting in each burrow as they ferret it, or in much larger quantities on the big sporting estates, on the occasion of a grand "battue" to support the long succession of nets required to prevent the game from running back when once driven forward into any particular covert.

In some districts much birch is grown, and when a "fell" takes place, all the spray is carefully trimmed off, tied in bundles, and reserved for the manufacture of these old-fashioned "besoms" which are so much in request in "maltings" and granaries, where they are used for sweeping the floors, and clearing all the scattered grains from the cracks and crevices. The time is in much demand for "bobbins" and "reels" of different sizes.

When all the material used for any of the purpose above mentioned has been selected from the "fell," the residue of all descriptions is bound up into faggots for burning.

Besides cutting the "copsewood" it is usual at this season of the year to "thin out," wherever it may be necessary - for the sake of the younger trees coming on - the oaks that are considered fit for the axe. These are first cleaned round the bottom of the trunk, next the ground, a circular incision is then made through the bark all round the stem of the tree, another ring-like cut is made as high up as a man can reach, and the back between these is stripped clean away. All the trees that are marked for the "fell" are served in this manner previously to being cut down: the remainder of the trunk and all the branches being barked when the tree is in recumbent position; this process extending to the very smallest of the branches. The barking completed, the stem is freed from all the branches, large and small, the larger being adapted for gate and fencing posts, the smaller, and especially the bent pieces, are used for "rustic" work, such as garden seats, arbors, summer houses, etc.

When all the operations are completed, the poles, faggots, stakes, etc., are carried to the rideways, and stacked by the side of the paths, when the auctioneer most probably takes them in hand, and after dividing them into convenient lots, holds a sale, when they are purchased, subject to the condition that they shall be cleared by a certain date, after which the woodland once more reverts to its quiet and mystery: the bare hardness becomes quickly softened, a new and thick growth of foliage hides once more the now familiar outlines, and before many seasons pass, the sense of illimitable depth and breadth again takes possession of one. The familiar cadence of the breeze-stirred foliage once more falls upon the ear: the same lights and shadows as of old, fleck the pathways as the cloudlets flit across the sky, and the shy creatures once more take sanctuary in its deep recesses.

A Country Year - Coppice and Coppicing.

February 6th to February 23rd

The Hazel tree (Corylus avellana) regularly coppiced can live for hundreds of years, and this form of woodland management has been practiced for many centuries. The coppiced Hazel wood, at one time, was the wattle of the old wattle and daub type of buildings, once common in the settlements of the Eastern Counties; and shaped and folded spars from the Hazel were used to fix down the thatched topping on those very same houses. When the tree was not coppiced the resulting Hazel nuts were, and still are, a feast for nuthatches, wood pigeons, jays, and once the red squirrel. They were also an autumn food, and welcome treat, for the people of the past.

From the Yarmouth Independent E. W. Priest (1932) - Those who live, or whose occupations lie, within the shelter of plantations, or coppices are "in luck" at this time of year. There are so many hours at odd times, when the sun comes out as if it meant business; so many hours when the dormant forces of nature seem "on the pounce," and ready to spring, fully equipped, from the sleeping boughs of the coppice.

William Cobbett; whose boyhood was passed in a typically woodland district, emphasises this fact. He says: "Even in winter the coppices are beautiful to the eye, while they comfort the mind with the idea of shelter and warmth," in his "Rural Rides," he also comments many times on the comparatively greater degree of comfort that surrounds the lives of the rural workers whose lots are cast in woodland districts - that is, in districts where the coppice is a commercial proposition, and systematically cut down at regular periods, and the material "worked up" into various forms for which it is suitable.

Here in Norfolk this industry is not followed quite in the same directions that it is in Sussex, and some of the other southern counties, and is not indeed, except in one or two districts, a well recognised industry in any form. But, just as certain of these districts seem to have been, from time immemorial associated with ling or birch-broom tying, so other districts have always had in them one or two families. who, almost exclusively, took possession of the industries that flow from the coppice, in one form or another - brotch making, bean and pea-stick bundling, faggotting, trimming-out trees, fold, and rabbit-net stakes, and last, but not least, making hurdles from the riven chestnut poles.

It ought to be a pleasant enough occupation. It calls them to go into the woodland sanctuaries, just as the windswept fields outside are bleakest and barest. Here in the woods there is a warm carpet of leaves to intercept the damp chill of the earth, and when the sun does come out it lights up, and brings out the now fast-changing hues of the birches and hazels that will go on gaining warmer colour each day, for two whole months at least. Should a very genial spell set in, it may be necessary to concentrate on the "fell," before the leaves break out of their sleeping bags, and nature pumps the sap too generously through the poles. It is only now and again that the casual observer gets a peep into the inner recesses of these plantations, and this, when his attention is drawn, as he goes by on the road, to the "chop, chop," that he can hear. To his surprise, when he peers over the hedge, he sees that what has been hitherto, a dark, mysterious thicket, is now penetrable by the eye to unexpected depths. The tall, chestnut, oak, birch, and hazel clumps, which, the last time he passed this way, grew so high, and overlapped each other in such dense succession, are now lying in long rows, amid the freshly severed stubs. He would have to wait till much later on in the season to see the ground carpeted with flowers of whose existence, only those who can recall the last "fell" are aware.

A Country Year - Coppice and Coppicing.

February 6th to February 23rd

One institution still remains with us, and is likely to continue to do so - the sheep-fold, and intimately in one form or other, do these coppice operations connect themselves with this, the most idyllic of the farmer's life interests. A turnip- cutter, a tipped-up tumbril, a heap of topped and tailed swedes, and a bag or two of chaff and cake - these, when ringed in with hurdles, invest with an air of comparative cosiness the bleakest hillside. An enclosure of this kind seems to shut in, and concentrate the warmth diffused from the individual members of the flock, and define an area that is somehow walled-in from the cold and dreariness outside.

There are several means of folding in the sheep, and more than one kind of hurdle, but to my mind those that most completely suggest this natural snugness are made of riven chestnut poles. Netting never gives me this impression, and the clanking, metal structures that you so often see tailing and rattling along field ways, on their iron wheels, behind a farm cart, look too hard, and cold and daunting, to be associated with gentle eyes and soft fleeces. But here, in the primitive adaption of nature's own way of raising a barrier, the hurdle constructed, almost on natures lines, from her woodland treasures, we have something that is never out of harmony with the earthy contour of the fields, or the soft outlines of the sheep. To see the shepherd bearing them to where he is making his fold, followed by his "page," carrying a bundle of oaken staves to hold them in position, is possibly an operation that has gone on, with little modification, since sheep have grazed on our British soil.

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