February 2026 – Coppice Association North West

CANW president Brian Crawley shares some more history of Moss and Heights Spring Woods in the article attached. If any of our members have any other articles or information to share please email it to us and I will circulate.

More Moss and Height Spring Wood

After a successful first year in the wood the next coppice coupe was to be the next one up the BOAT to the gate and the boundary fence, still in Height Spring. In order to minimise the timber extraction process our second charcoal kiln was brought into the wood to a newly made pitstead near to the gate at a site which we called Bell View because from it there was a very good view of the prominent Ill Bell to the north east of Windermere. Good quantities of coppiced timber were snigged into a stack by Corrie from the coupe and then cut into 4 foot lengths and built into 4x4x8 foot cords close to the kiln to mature and be ready to cut again into 2 foot lengths for charcoaling.

A big storm came through one night and the following morning an early section of the BOAT was completely obstructed by a couple of fallen trees. Fortunately with the chainsaw in the back of the horsebox and all my PPE gear on the obstruction was soon cleared. Towards the top of the wood, just beyond our new coupe, was a large fallen oak tree across a much used footpath. A small length of the trunk was cut and cleft and used for a bridge over a small stream which had previously not had a useful crossing for the footpath walkers.

One significant student at our charcoal making courses was Myles Dickinson who lived at Ickenthwaite, further up the Rusland Valley, and was able to tell us that had been at the filming of the visit of the Swallows to the charcoal burners in 1973 for the Swallows and Amazons film of the following year. It was very soon after the course that Myles took us to the site of the burn and the filming in Glass Knott Wood, just off the road up to Ickenthwaite. Several features of the site closely related to views of the Swallows and Amazon film and the Jack Allonby earthburn film and the photos in David Jones’ book. One interesting feature was the stone fireplace of the charcoal burner’s hut. Sadly the hut was long gone. (This revelation, for which I had searched for several years, led to the repeat charcoal earthburn with Dan Sumner at the site in 2023 at the 50^th anniversary of the S&A filming.)

Other visitors to the wood, of a very contrasting nature, were a group from the Common Wealth Forestry Association led by Edward Mills and a group of children from Greengate Street School in Barrow-in-Furness who were overnighting in the old school building by the church in Colton at the other end of the BOAT. We had interesting responses to our work from both of them. Another group of visitors was from Lancaster University who used us as a feature of their ramble through the Rusland Valley. They were led by Brian Jones who we had met many years ago through the Ramblers Association.

We had a connection with Sylvia Watthews through her collection of charcoal fines from us and she was also a gardener at the Lake District National Park Authority’s Brockhole Visitor Centre. Sylvia asked us to give a quotation for the installation of a quite long and high, continuous woven hazel fence at the Centre to give the garden some visual security from the visitors. We had a very interesting job which also had a gateway. A further contact at the Centre gave us the use of one of their horticultural items display racks to display some of our woodland products for sales to their visitors.

An interesting demonstration day, away from MAHS, was at the Skipton Sheep Day in the Skipton Market Street where I made one of my very few hazel hurdles. I cleft the thicker rods on a custom made cleaving post which I had mounted on an old pallet. I didn’t manage to make any use of the hurdle when the sheep did their race along the street past my demonstration.

In the last few months of our work in Moss and Height Spring we moved the kiln from the Bell View site to the middle of the next coupe, still at the west edge of the wood, just past the stream over which we had built the new oak bridge. We called this coupe ‘four oaks’ after the four mature ‘standard’ oak trees which formed a perfect square on the upper east area of the coupe.

With our connection with BHMAT we had taken on the training of a coppice apprentice but as we came to the end of our 3 year contract with the Woodland Trust we retired. This was before the start of his 3^rd year so he took over the coppicing contract in Moss and Height Springs with some external supervision but sadly did not complete the apprenticeship.

After the apprentice left the wood the Woodland Trust approached CANW to take over the management of the wood but it was not feasible because we were not a formal charity. Fortunately BHMAT was and were able to come to a reasonably long term arrangement with the Woodland Trust which has proved very beneficial.

After terminating our full time work in the woods we maintained contact with CANW and BHMAT and attended a few shows, demonstrations and training sessions. One particular feature was our involvement with the management of occasional charcoal earthburns which we had learned from Arthur Barker at the Millenium Burn at Grizedale in 2001. An important one in 2023 was at Glass Knott Wood near Ickenthwaite in the Rusland Valley with Dan Sumner which was a 50 year celebration of the burn in 1973 which was filmed with the children visiting the charcoal burners for the Swallows and Amazon film released in the following year. It was featured in the NCFed newsletter and on the internet as ‘News from the Charcoal Burners of Cumbria’.

An earlier earthburn had been carried out in MAHS on the east side of Height Spring when the first BHMAT coupe was being cut Some of the earliest bark peeling also carried out at the same time. Another involvement in MAHS was a notable tree survey. The results of the survey were on the BHMAT website some time ago but I still have all the original results in my own handwriting.

This might be the last report of Woodland Way’s activities.

Brian Crawley

January 2026