First Published November 2026, Updated 30/08/2026
The English landscape is ancient, and I think many people who talk about connection to the land deeply misunderstand what connection to land and nature means. The megaliths in the English landscape are a distraction. They are mostly out-of-date communal calendars, not unlike the more portable astrolabe and Sundial. They are interesting, but the living ancient landscape is where we can best learn the connection to nature and the land in a meaningful and deeply fulfilling way.
Natural historic features in the English Landscape tell a story of missing people. The hedges and woodlands once supported the livelihoods of whole communities of woodcutters, coppicers, bobodgers, huhuddlers, charcoal makers, and many other trades related to coppicing. The story of where most of these skilled men went is sad, and it has led to the decline of ancient woodlands nationwide. Coppice on large estates is largely neglected, as it is not seen as economically viable to manage. The self-styled “stewards of the land” have systematically neglected England’s ancient woodland heritage.
England’s ancient woodland neglect started with the Industrial Revolution, followed by the 1st world War. Skilled woodmen were sent to die on the battlefields of Europe in 2 world wars. Alternative materials like plastics, mass-produced ceramics, and glassware replaced many household products. Domestic house coal had already replaced most wood fuel. Charcoal was replaced by coke, wooden hurdles by galvanized steel gate-hurdles, and, in modernity under industrial capitalism, Woodland became marginal land or private shoots, the coppice neglected to overstand and be shaded out by high forest.
Coppicing in the UK is an ancient practice with roots in the Neolithic period, or Stone Age Farmers (around 5-8,000 BCE). It was a widespread form of woodland management throughout the Bronze, Iron (Celtic), Roman, and Saxon periods, and became even more central to rural life in the medieval era, providing a steady supply of timber, fuel, and products already mentioned. The practice began to decline in the mid-1800s because of the Industrial Revolution and the increased availability of coal, but coppicing is now experiencing a resurgence because of its benefits for biodiversity and as a sustainable source of wood and other products.
The term regenerative is nothing new. Coppicing, or “constant spring,” is the ancient regenerative practice of cutting trees over and over again. Usually on rotations of no more than 2-15 years. But never skipping generations. Suggesting that “hazel coppice was last cut in the time of our grandfathers” by the Celts is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect; it is lazy research. There are many books that cover the history of ancient English woodlands: Oliver Rackham (1939–2015) was a pioneering Cambridge botanist and historian who transformed our understanding of ancient English woodlands with his groundbreaking 1980 book, Ancient Woodland.
Sometimes I just want to tell these grifters to shut-the-f***-up! But it’s better to let them make fools of themselves, though few people are knowledgeable enough about ancient woodlands to challenge their ridiculous assumptions.
Coppicing has other names too: constant spring and letting in the light; both describe the processes taking place in the managed woodland. Tree stumps cut regularly go through repeated springs as they regenerate. Letting in the light is what happens when a coupe (area) is cut. The time scale between cuts is short, rarely exceeding 15 years for a slow-growing species like Box, which was used to manufacture printing blocks. Hazel, however, is cut every 8 years; ash every 8-15 years for tool handles (because handles are riven from logs). Oak was coppiced for ship timbers. Willow, sweet chestnut, and horse chestnut for charcoal. The gunpowder industry sought alder coppice for high-quality charcoal. Willow is used to make artists’ charcoal.
The herbaceous layer in ancient woodlands is an ecosystem that has co-evolved with coppice to depend on periodic letting in of the light.
The Doomsday Book catalogs the value of English estates, measuring England’s coppice woodlands in Faggots (bundles of poles). Vast areas of woodlands were recorded. This 1000-year-old record of our ancient ecological heritage is good for mapping contemporary decline. Today’s output from ancient woodlands is negligible, but if expanded, it could be an incredible way to capture CO2 by the ton and store it in flood defenses in perpetuity.
Other rural skills related to coppicing are pollarding, wood pasture management, agroforestry and hedge laying. All follow similar rotation times to coppicing. I have worked as a coppice woodcutter; indeed, these Shiitake logs were grown and cut by me.
My coppiced Willow Shiitake farm. I planted these trees 20 years ago and cut them on a 10-year rotation. Many of the stools died last year during the drought and then from bark beetle attack. Drought & severe heatwaves are slowly killing our native woodlands.
Our ancient coppice woodlands, long neglected, are a shadow of their former productive glory. Many of our woodlands and ancient landscapes have changed beyond recognition since the UK. The extinction of the iconic English Elm is directly attributable to climate change aiding the spread of the bark beetle which carries the disease. The English Elm was the Forest giant of UK woodlands. Mightier than the Beech, the English Elm was the tree used to build the pilings for docks in the port of London and Liverpool, and boat builders used it for its underwater durability.
Every wood from every tree has properties for which it was well known by those who harvested and utilized it
Plain was known as lacewood for its patterned grain; Oak was used in construction and shipbuilding, Lath basket making, and laths for plaster in houses. (Laths are thin strips of wood riven (split) from straight-grained logs with a froe.) Oak shingles or shakes were also common. Lime was known as butterwood for its softness and was sought out by decorative carvers like Grinling Gibbons. Lime makes excellent bow drill shafts. Ash was used for tool handles and Morris Traveler chassis because of its shock absorbency. Hazel has by far the greatest versatility, especially in constructing wattle-and-daub thatched buildings. From the Hazel laths to hatching spars and staples. In agriculture for hurdles. Willow roots hold river banks together. The box tree was important to the printing industry and has a whole hill in Surrey named after the tree.
New Problems For Nature Education
Now we have a new problem in the 21st century. It’s not a new disease; it is the “intuitive” knowledge of neo-pagan new-age shamans, who have spent minimal time in deep nature or done any actual research before talking endlessly about their fantasy shaman-role-play worldview, one that does not reflect the reality of the historic landscape. Coppicing in the past or now: A “shamanic journey” visualization meditation through coppice, last cut in the time of our grandfathers. This is not “a thing”. Intuition cannot tell you how coppice is managed, but proper, rigorous research can.
Modern coppice management is essentially the same as it was 7000 years ago, apart from a few of the tools. 3000 years ago, stone tools were favored over iron, and it was a matter of economics. Flint Axes stay sharper longer.
The etymology of many of the terms used to describe coppicing is of French, or more precisely Norman, origin. But even then they are far older, originating in ancient Greek: kolaphos, meaning a blow, slap, or strike. It passed into Vulgar Latin as colpare (to cut with a blow) and colpus (a blow), derived from the Latin colaphus. It then evolved into copeiz (a cut forest) and the verb couper (to cut). Later adopted into Middle English as copies or coppice, referring to a small wood or thicket that is periodically cut back. The short variant copse appeared in the 1500s through a linguistic shortening (syncopation) of coppice. Coppicing was brought to Britain from South Eastern Europe by the northward migrations of Neolithic Anatolian farmers; these were the megalith builders of ancient Europe whose astronomical calendars governed when they planted crops
It is clear from the above that “That which you hold to be true” cannot be applied in the real world of Nature and land management. If you seek to imagine a new world post-capitalism, post-ecological collapse, its ecological management requires scientific inquiry even if it starts with intuition.
Our Ancient ancestral woodlands are in trouble, and people might argue that only botanists and biologists can see it. The fact is, everyone I know who works in the woods agrees that increased heat and drought are stresses. Temperate trees stop photosynthesizing when it’s too hot.
Connecting to our ancient woodland, hedges and landscape heritage takes more work than sitting in the woods and asking what the trees want from us; do that by all means; trees love being noticed, but assuming what you project them saying about their management needs to be fact-checked.
Imagine learning the skills to cut a pole and make the drum hoop from it yourself, with hand tools. I am not saying you should kill a deer for the skin, but how close can you get to a deer? Close enough to kill it with your bare hands or slit its throat with a knife?
Initiations Into Nature Connection Can Be Extreme, But We Need To Know That The Initiate Has The Skills To Survive. We Don’t Make These Things Safe, So They Are Easy.
Ceremonial and Practical Items Which Are Made And Given Have More Power Than Those Exchanged For Money. Money Demeans Gifts From Nature.
There is great power in ceremonial items made from foraged resources and then manufactured from scratch without involving industrial capitalism’s machines, chemicals, or processing. The power comes from knowing how to use them.
This all-natural tinder box is made and stocked entirely from nature. It’s not a ceremonial item; it’s practical. It is intended to be used to carry tinder
This Tinder Box is made entirely from Items harvested from the forest floor; nothing from a live standing tree is used in its manufacture.
This Tinder Box is flammable. Pieces of the box could be sliced off for tinder. If necessary, but I doubt I would ever have to do that because in 4 hours I can make tinder from nettle fiber.
In fact, an incredible number of wild plants can be processed into tinder for the Flint and steel, ferro-rod, and bow drill. With the bow drill, it’s far better to catch your “coal” on slow-burning tinder rather than a leaf, to drop it into your tinder bundle.
These are the skills that help us connect to nature. These are the initiations that bring us closer to the land by helping us know it and how our ancestors lived. These are the skills of neuro-decolonization.
The Sacred Fire Keeper skill isn’t learned in a weekend. It’s not about holding the space; it’s about managing the fire and the components to make the fire, maintain the fire, scent the fire, close the fire, and leave it as though no one was there, even under the most challenging conditions.
We use inclement weather to develop our skills. Repeated failure is a tough learning curve mediated by Serotonin and Dopamine in nature; each failure is part of the learning process. It builds a unique skill set.
I am in no way claiming to be an expert in any of these skills, but I have been doing them for a long time and setting my limitations. I have lived off-grid, with and without electricity. But the greatest privilege I have known is to live in community with an eternal fire burning in the Hearth. The eternal Hearth is an ancient, deeply rooted tradition predating ancient Greece and Hestia: Hestia’s name means “hearth, fireplace, altar”. The eternal fire is based on the idea that kindling a new fire can be difficult, and, in fact, it was and remains a highly skilled undertaking without modern fire-ignition materials.
The chemical match is only 120 years old; in a short time, it has already deskilled 3-4 generations.
Fire, well managed, can make all the difference in a grid-down survival situation, even if you are still in your home. Dismissing survival skills because of preconceived notions about what they represent, the belief that practitioners intend to live in the Stone Age, or that they intend to hunt and gather post-collapse, is a failure to plan for the future, and a failure to plan is planning to fail in a crisis.
Leave a Reply