Coppicing is a traditional woodland management technique dating back to the Stone Age. The Anglo-Saxons maintained some woodlands as coppice, cutting close to the stump and allowing the shoots to regenerate until the next coppice cycle several years later. This is a renewable source of timber material.
Later Medieval texts describe coppicing, as part of larger woodland management and forestry, allowing commoners to harvest coppiced timber while maintaining large oak standards.
Managing woodlands in Britain as coppice allows light to the forest floor, which benefits forest flora and fauna and imitates natural cycles of succession, upon which some species depend. This means that coppicing is beneficial for woodland biodiversity. Coppicing also extends the life of the tree; a hazel tree, left to it's own devices, would grow to maturity and die in around 150 years. However, there are coppice stools in Britain which date back around 2000 years. The process of coppicing reinvigorates the tree, and these coppice stools, if regularly maintained, can practically live forever.
These old hazel coppice stools are ancient, possibly hundreds of years old already. But they are overstood, meaning they have not been cut for many years, and the stems are beginning to rot out. From counting the growth rings, many of the stems are 70 years old or more. Hazel is usually cut on a 7-10 year rotation, meaning these stems are some 60 years overstood. Carefully cutting the stems back to the base will reinvigorate the hazel, and hopefully regenerate the coppice stool.
When felling trees with an axe, a gob cut is made at the front of the tree, in the felling direction. This has a flat base and is cut at roughly 45 degrees to the trunk and usually no more than a third of the way in.
A second felling cut is made at the back of the tree, an inch or two above the gob cut, to create a hinge upon which the tree falls.
Once felled, upper branches of the tree are cleared and piled up as brash, to be used as firewood or in brash hedging. All usable straight lengths are saved as timber and stored off the ground, and all straight hazel rods are saved for use in wattles or as poles. The rest of the tree, too knotty or curved to be useful in building, is stacked as firewood.
The height at which the stems are felled are dictated by the ease at which they can be cut with an axe, dependent on the angle of the trunk, slope of the ground and any obstacles such as neighbouring stems. This usually means the felling cut is much higher than is ideal for a coppiced stool. So, once felled, the cut stems are cut back with the axe as close as possible to the ground, and cut at an angle to allow rainwater runoff.
New buds will shoot from the base of the stools as the hazel regrows. Modern coppice stools are cut very low, often at ground level. However coppicing with an axe necessarily requires the stools to be cut one or two feet above the ground. According to Oliver Rackham, this may actually be beneficial as the tree stores much of it's nutrients at or just above ground level.
Any remaining young stems can be left standing, or can be laid down and staked into the ground in a process known as layering or pleaching. Where the young stem is in contact with the ground, it can grow roots and form a sucker. Therefore new hazel stools can be created, benefiting from vigorous growth as they are still attached to the mother plant. Once established, the pleach can be cut and the new hazel plant managed as a separate coppice stool. This is a useful alternative to planting young hazel whips when expanding coppice woodland.
Once the stools are dressed at an angle, they can be left to regrow on their own. However, browsing deer will inevitably eat the young shoots as they emerge, damaging or even killing off the tree. Therefore, it is vital to protect the coppice stools from browsing deer. This can be done by erecting a wattle or brash fence around the stool to keep the deer out. The coppiced hazel rods and brash can be used to construct this fence. But woven blackthorn was also traditionally used, as its long sharp thorns act as an extra deterrent against deer, and the coppiced hazel can be saved for other uses.
With their angles cut, and woven blackthorn brash fences, these freshly coppiced hazel stools will hopefully thrive and regenerate, growing vigorously and sending up new hazel stems which can then be re cut with the next coppice cycle, in 7-10 years.
With thanks to:
Hector Cole, Blacksmith, for forging the Saxon T-shaped Axe.
Grzegorz Kulig, Silversmith, for making the pattern-welded knife.
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