Woodland Heritage field trip 2021

Mowat & Company are proud to support the UK charity Woodland Heritage.

Their name is a simple combination of two words: Woodland & Heritage. Their annual field weekends, however, often reveal what might appear as a focused niche is anything but simple.

On their annual field weekends, we have come to expect the unexpected, to see new things, to hear about new ideas, and to discuss what might happen next in UK woodland. This year was set up to be full of contrasts beyond the norm. Alex went along to this year’s event hosted by long-term WH member John Makepeace along with Zach Mollica and Chris Sadd from the Architectural Association. John is a statesman of craftsmanship in wood and has been based in rural Dorset for many years. Zach and Chris’s organisation is a disruptive, dystopian, digital architecture school based in Bedford Square, London.

The handcrafted, practical, and organic were to be pitched up against the digital, the parametric and the academic. John, Zach, and Chris did not disappoint.

John Makepeace surprised us, in his introduction at the beginning of the tour at Hooke Park. He is associated with intricate and crafted furniture from premium timber and commanding premium prices. However, he explained how his project at Hooke Park set out to find a use for low-value forest thinnings. It started when he and Ted Happold invited the famous German engineer, Frei Otto to design and make the first workshop building at Hook Park. A building made of low-value spruce thinnings of typically 100-150mm diameter. The gentle organic undulating arch structure is made of two straight poles bent in compression and joined along the ridgeline. In contrast, Zach then showed us recent experimental angled, faceted, super-sheds designed and made by students. These are experiments in minimising steel in timber frames, computer-generated forms, and experiments in angling timber cladding away from the rain.

As if that contrast, in styles and approach, was not enough in the afternoon we visited “Farrs”, John Makepeace’s home. A fine 17th century Jacobean stone building with some cleverly restrained pieces of contemporary timber joinery inserted into the old stone.

“The woodland now has a growing program of foraging food for human consumption, an impossible idea only a short while ago.”

Chris, the forester at Hook park since the mid 1980s, explained how he had inherited a monoculture even-aged Beech forest planted by the Forestry Commission in the 1950s. He eloquently related how clearing patches of woodland and a steady move towards an un-even aged and mixed forest has brought about its own contrast. He is changing the woodland from a monoculture with an almost sterile, dark, and acidic forest floor to a much more productive environment. The woodland now has a growing program of foraging food for human consumption, an impossible idea only a short while ago.

Zach showed us the AA’s newest and most impressive tool: a huge robotic arm that can cut and mill timber to any form that a 3D digital model can describe. It towers menacingly above a human and needs a large safety screen. During the lunch break, Woodland Heritage member Fred Dodson informally showed a few of us his tiny Japanese Kanna planes. He had made these himself. They fit in the palm of his hand and are his favorite tool.

The field day is a chance to share knowledge and provoke debate. The setting of Hooke Park and Farrs combined with 3 inspiring hosts stimulated us all. We had conversations about mental health, climate change, building regulations, education, tradition, experimentation, elegance, form, biodiversity, rewilding, garlic pesto, meditation, and economics.

In spite of the apparent contrasts in this year’s visit, each part of the conversation about the UK’s Woodland Heritage returned to a simple core: the huge latent value of productive woodland in the UK. Perhaps it is simple after all, Woodland Heritage has the knowledge, support, connections, and vision to demonstrate this value.