Coppicing is normally a winter task like hedgelaying. It is best to work with living trees and shrubs in the winter season whilst vegetation is dormant and before the nesting season. Coppicing is a traditional woodland craft and was particularly popular in Buckinghamshire with the 'Bodgers', the craftsmen who turned unseasoned wood for the local furniture industry. It involves cutting trees back to allow re-growth from the cut stumps, known as stools. The cut wood, the coppice products, can be used for pea sticks, bindings and stakes for use in hedgelaying. Cut hazel is needed for their sticks by our local Morris Men! Coppicing is currently enjoying a revival because of increased interest in the use of cut willow, in furniture, basket and in the garden.
The greater the age range in a woodland, the greater the benefit to wildlife. A coppiced woodland is therefore cut at intervals and in rotation. New growth allows ground flora to flourish as plenty of sunlight reaches them. Some birds and insects prefer low-growing shrubs, and others prefer mature standards, the full grown trees. Standards were grown for timber so took a long time before money could be made. The coppiced trees are known as underwood. In our local woodlands, beech, ash and oak are grown as standards, with sufficient space between them to allow them to spread their branches. The under-storey is usually hazel and this is coppiced approximately every 7 to 10 years.
Coppicing began to decline in the late 1800s and little coppiced woodland is left. However, a recent trip to Middle Beck Ing, in Lancashire, was to coppice hazel and bird cherry for the Woodland Trust. Here coppicing had continued until after the Second World War as the wood was used in local heavy industry as fuel. Red deer are a problem here as they nibble at regrowth and prevent new trees establishing themselves in any gaps created by falling trees. Grazing rabbits are not a problem, unlike in Buckinghamshire and Middlesex, so the stems can be cut almost to ground level. Care must be taken so that the cut stumps slope away from the centre so that rain drains away to the ground and does not cause rotting. As deer and rabbits can destroy any regrowth , the cut stools must be covered. We have tried creating lobster pots, using the cut 'tops', wigwams at Middle Beck Ing and high woven cages at Harefield Place. As an additional precaution, some stem are not cut but are 'layered' by pegging them down. Ultimately, fencing must be used. At Gutteridge Woods, chestnut fencing is used, which used to be a coppice crop.
Each felled area is known as a coupe but there are other terms used(1). In the woodlands managed by the London Wildlife Trust - Hillingdon Group, the wooded areas have been divided up evenly so that there are seven sections where a seven year coppice cycle is to be used, and so forth. A cleared area can look rather bare but in the spring, bluebells appear and lesser celandine; the invertebrates seek these and other plants out and the whole area is revitalised.
1. Fuller, R.J. & M.S. Warren. Coppiced woodlands: their management for wildlife. Peterborough: Nature Conservancy Council, 1990, p. 8.
ŠJudy Cross
Last updated 6/12/1999.