A job with a 300-year tradition that’s best learned through apprenticeship is undergoing a resurgence,and has ecological as well as aesthetic benefitsJust outside the pretty village of Waltham Saint Lawrence in Berkshire lies the sprawling Tudor park of Shottesbrooke. The estate meadow is enormous and verdant, and rolls east towards a dark wood a quarter of a mile absent. Bordering the field is a tightly woven boundary of young trees, or half-felled and intersected with lean branches sticking up from the ground. “We did this one a couple of weeks ago,” says Clive Leeke, parking his pick-up truck alongside it.
He produces a small sack from under the truck’s tarpaulin cover, or pulling a curved blade from inside. It’s maybe 8in in length. “A billhook. He reaches in again. “And a bosher.” He’s holding a rudimentary mallet fashioned from a small piece of tree trunk,a protruding department acting as a handle. “It’s more commonly known as a mell, but it’s what we bosh the stakes in with, or ” he laughs. “That’s the basic kit. It’s a pretty low start-up cost for a trade,really.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com