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Due to Covid-19, we have reduced personnel at the offices of the Sylva Foundation and our premises at the Sylva Wood Centre. Emails and phone messages are being checked but please allow a little longer than usual to receive a response. Please do not arrange a formal visit without first checking with us. Members of the public are free to enjoy our network of permitted paths through the Future Forest as usual.
We are running a series of one-day timber-framing and raising courses at the Sylva Wood Centre, run by the Carpenters’ Fellowship. Come and learn jointing, framing-up, hand-rearing roof trusses, and fitting purlins and ridge pieces using traditional tools and techniques.
House of Wessex timber frame
During this unique timber-framing and raising course you will develop skills and knowledge in the making and raising of a timber-frame using traditional tools and techniques.
You will be working alongside highly-skilled craftspeople, helping to make and raise the timber frame of the House of Wessex during the course. Each one-day course is one of five courses being run between 3rd and 7th July. You may book on more than one day by simply registering separately for each day. Please note that the work will be physically demanding, so please take this into account before booking multiple days!
Teaching will be provided by highly experienced craftspeople in the Carpenters’ Fellowship. Learning will include a selection of the following, catering for a wide range of skill and experience :
Completing treewrighting on parts of the timber frame
Fitting of wall plates onto posts which will be set into the ground
Jointing and framing-up the roof trusses
Hand-rearing the roof trusses
Fitting pulins and ridge pieces
Treewrighting and timber framing
At the conclusion of the five days, the frame will be complete and ready for fixing of wattle hurdles on the roof, and other stages of construction including thatching (also offered as a course).
Full training will be provided (no prior experience necessary). The course will be outdoors in all weathers, so you will need to wear appropriate clothing (sun and rain).
Drinks and hot food will be provided, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Overnight camping (bring your own tent) may be available on the site, or locally. More details will follow your booking.
In addition, a programme of evening events (i.e. beyond the end of the formal course) will take place across the five days (3-7 July). The exact nature of these on any particular day will vary, but may include a range of talks on relevant craft and history, and social events.
Learn about traditional and sustainable early thatching methods, including those to be used on the live reconstruction of the Anglo-Saxon, House of Wessex.
10th-14th August 2019 (five one-day courses)
Led by Alan Jones, Conservation Carpenter and Master Thatcher, a leading thatcher in experimental archaeology and historical reconstructions since the early eighties. Each of the five one-day courses is centred on the thatching on the newly reconstructed timber House of Wessex at Sylva Foundation, south of Oxford.
Thatching with Alan Jones
You will learn how to use the materials and techniques to be used on the roof including laying turf over wattle hurdles, processing straw into yelms and bundles spar coating the thatch, dressing with a Leggett and gaining the required depth of fixings and overall depth of coat work.
The course will also include slide show and talk about evolution of our relationship with cereals as a food and shelter crop. There will be the opportunity to mill grain into flour and taste bread made from the wheat straw from the roof.
Course content
Lecture of history and development of thatching in the UK.
Handling and processing the straw.
Applying turf to the hurdles.
Learning techniques for applying thatch to the roof at required thickness.
Spar coating the straw securely into position.
Dressing of the thatch to gain the desired shape.
Details
Small groups to allow for an intimate learning experience
Delegates can complete one or more days at £75 per day (discount for all five days, see below)
Delegates that complete 5 days may be invited to volunteer and complete the thatch on the House of Wessex reconstruction
Essential Requirements
Delegates are required to:
Have a good level of fitness
Be able to work at heights
Provide their own clothing suitable for work outdoors in all weathers
Provide their own safety boots
Provide your own food and drink
We are offering five one-day courses, run back-to-back.
Saxon Building Woodwork, or ‘Treewrighting’ – with Damian Goodburn
Learn about Anglo-Saxon building woodwork, based mainly on the study of surviving wooden remains, including a review of relatively new evidence, with live demonstrations of tools and techniques, and opportunities to watch treewrighting in action. Led by leading archaeological woodwork specialist Damian Goodburn BA PhD.
Saturday 23rd March 2019, 10.00am-4.00pm Cost £75.
Saxon broad axe work
Treewighting and timber-framing – with the Carpenters Fellowship – £100
During this unique one day treewrighting course you will learn and develop skills and knowledge in the making of a timber-frame using traditional tools and techniques. Five one-day courses available which can also be booked as a block.
Available on 20th,21st,22nd 23rd & 24th March 2019, 9.00am-5.00pm. Cost £100 per day.
Carpenters’ Fellowship training at the Sylva Wood Centre
Hurdle making – with coppice worker and craftsman Simon Farndon
Students will be taught hazel splitting and how to make hurdles on the Saturday and then will practise making hurdles on the Sunday.
Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March 2019, 10.00am-4.00pm. Cost £200.
Hurdle-making with Simon Farndon
Make a canoe paddle – with award-winning boat builder Colin Henwood
During this two-day course you will learn how to shape a single canoe paddle from ash using hand tools.
Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th April, 2019, 9.00am to 5.00pm. Cost £225.
Colin Henwood with students making a canoe paddle at the Sylva Wood Centre
Learn and practise how to split hazel and make hurdles with coppice worker and craftsman Simon Farndon during this two-day course at the Sylva Wood Centre.
Simon Fardon, hurdle-maker, demonstrating
Teaching hurdle making
Students will be taught hazel splitting and how to make hurdles on the Saturday and then will practise making hurdles on the Sunday.
Hazel hurdles are a very popular and attractive alternative to garden panels or garden screens and wind breaks. Split (cleft) and round hazel rods are woven around hazel uprights (zales). There are slight variations on design between different regions, but students will learn to make the most robust hurdles using good quality graded split hazel, which is twisted around end posts to produce a very strong and robust hurdle.
The hurdles that students make will be used in the Anglo-Saxon reconstruction of the House of Wessex, to be built over the summer of 2019. If they wish, students on this course will be welcome to volunteer to help with this by making more hurdles later in the year, or by helping fix hurdels to the wall annd roof structure of the building.
By taking part, students will not only help in this exciting volunteer project, but leave with the requisite skills to make their own hurdles at home.
We are pleased to offer five one-day courses in treewrighting and timber-framing, from 20th to 24th March.
House of Wessex timber frame
During this one-day course you will learn and develop skills in the making of a timber-frame using traditional tools and techniques. Teaching will be provided by highly experienced craftspeople in the Carpenters’ Fellowship. Learning will include a selection of the following, catering for a wide range of skill and experience :
Axe jointing “treewrighting”
Cleaving and dressing logs
Converting timbers
Shaping timbers
Carving wooden tree nails
Hewing logs by axe
Full training will be provided (no prior experience necessary). Although you will be working undercover, the course will be ‘outdoors’, so you will need to wear appropriate clothing.
Drinks and hot food will be provided, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Overnight camping (bring your own tent) may be available on the site, or locally. More details will follow your booking.
A programme of evening events will also be on offer, including a range of talks on relevant craft and history, and social events.
You may book for more than one day. Please note that the activities will be physically demanding, so please take this into account before you sign up to all five days!
During this two-day course with award-winning boat builder Colin Henwood, you will learn how to shape a single canoe paddle from Ash using hand tools.
“I can’t think of anything that could have improved a perfect couple of days – I will signing up for another one soon.” Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.
Colin was fantastic; his attention to detail and support ensured we all left with a paddle I think even he was happy with! Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.
Make your own canoe paddle at the Wood Centre
Working with ash – our superior native hardwood.
Using traditional skills and tools you will produce a complex shape with hand and eye.
Learn how to finish your smooth and elegant design.
Take home a unique and usable canoe paddle ready for a varnish or an oil finish.
Tools and materials included (if you wish to bring your own tools please discuss this with the tutor).
Cost: £225 per person (materials included)
Venue: Our new purpose-built Education Barn at the Sylva Wood Centre, Oxfordshire, OX14 4QT
Colin Henwood founded his boatyard, Henwood and Dean Boatbuilders, in 1982 specialising in restoring and building wooden Thames launches. The boatyard received many awards in the UK and abroad, and in 2014 Colin was awarded Maker of the Year by the Heritage Crafts Association. In October 2016 Colin handed the boatyard over to two of his team who are successfully continuing the tradition he began 35 years ago. Not one to retire, Colin has established a workshop at the Sylva Wood Centre where he is currently re-building a 1920 Thames motor canoe.
Colin Henwood with students making a canoe paddle at the Sylva Wood Centre
During this two-day course with award-winning boat builder Colin Henwood, you will learn how to shape a single canoe paddle from Ash using hand tools.
“I can’t think of anything that could have improved a perfect couple of days – I will signing up for another one soon.” Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.
Colin was fantastic; his attention to detail and support ensured we all left with a paddle I think even he was happy with! Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.
Make your own canoe paddle at the Wood Centre
Working with ash – our superior native hardwood.
Using traditional skills and tools you will produce a complex shape with hand and eye.
Learn how to finish your smooth and elegant design.
Take home a unique and usable canoe paddle ready for a varnish or an oil finish.
Tools and materials included (if you wish to bring your own tools please discuss this with the tutor).
Cost: £225 per person (materials included)
Venue: Our new purpose-built Education Barn at the Sylva Wood Centre, Oxfordshire, OX14 4QT
Colin Henwood founded his boatyard, Henwood and Dean Boatbuilders, in 1982 specialising in restoring and building wooden Thames launches. The boatyard received many awards in the UK and abroad, and in 2014 Colin was awarded Maker of the Year by the Heritage Crafts Association. In October 2016 Colin handed the boatyard over to two of his team who are successfully continuing the tradition he began 35 years ago. Not one to retire, Colin has established a workshop at the Sylva Wood Centre where he is currently re-building a 1920 Thames motor canoe.
Colin Henwood with students making a canoe paddle at the Sylva Wood Centre
Led by Damian Goodburn BA PhD, a leading archaeological woodwork specialist, this workshop will be held in our new purpose-built Education Barn at the Sylva Wood Centre.
Learn about Anglo-Saxon building woodwork, based mainly on the study of surviving wooden remains, including a review of relatively new evidence, with live demonstrations of tools and techniques, and opportunities to watch treewrighting in action.
Morning activities will include illustrated talks covering the themes below, starting with evidence for how woodland resources were managed. Samples of books and publications will be discussed, including many rare items.
The variation in woodland materials from ‘wildwood’ to intensive coppiced woodland.
An overview of the range of waterlogged building woodwork remains found in Saxon and Saxo-Norman period England c.500-1180 AD when ‘carpentry’ and formal ‘timber-framing’ arrived from France.
Evidence for basic techniques carried out without saws, including felling, bucking, radial, tangential cleaving, hewing various shaped timbers, styles of wattlework.
Evidence for the range of joints and fastenings used, taps and locks, tusk tenons, laft joints, tongue and groove, scarfs, treenails and rove nails.
Tool marks and tool kits, narrow axes, broad axes, ‘groping irons’.
Evidence for ‘built-in’ furniture and fittings such as beds, benches, hearths, storage bins, and coops, doors and windows.
Relevant ethnographic evidence from later timber buildings in the ‘Homelands’ areas on the east side of the North Sea, less influenced by French-style timber-framed carpentry, and how that can be used to extend archaeological evidence from England.
Afternoon activity will involve handling real samples of Saxon woodwork, and high-quality replica tools and fastenings.
Throughout the day demonstrations will be used to illustrate some basic techniques essential to treewrighting, including cleaving a small straight green log (oak or ash c. 150-200mm diam by 1.8-2m long) using wooden wedges, hewing with a narrow-bladed and broad-bladed ‘T’ axe, simple Saxon joint cutting, and willow treenail (wythenails) making.
While the course is underway, delegates will be able to to witness a range of related treewrighting activities nearby, thanks to members of the Carpenters’ Fellowship working on the frame of the House of Wessex.
As part of the exciting House of Wessex project we are running three consecutive one-day treewrighting courses with tutors from the Carpenters’ Fellowship. Places are available for one, two, or three days. During the courses, samples will be made of the key building components for a major historical reconstruction taking place in 2019.
House of Wessex timber frame
Learning will include a selection of the following:
Timber conversion – cleaving and hewing timbers into shape for posts and plates (no saws were used in this period)
Foundations – earthfast anchoring of the posts
Axe carpentry – The shaping of stubby tusk tenons and through-mortises, grooving boards, fashioning halvings and lap joints
Fixings – Shaping the characteristic Saxon “treenails”, a peg with an enlarged head, often wedged internally
Walls and roof – creating wattle panels and hurdles, for the walls and the roof underthatch respectively
Full training will be provided (no prior experience necessary). Although you will be working undercover, the course will be ‘outdoors’, so you will need to wear appropriate clothing. Drinks and food will be provided. Overnight camping (bring your own tent) is available on the site. More details will follow your booking.
You may book for one or more days, up to a maximum of all three days. Please book separately for each day that you want to attend.
