An Ash from Croydon
It all started for me with a large pollarded Ash tree in Claire’s new garden. It sadly had to go as it was too big and dangerous. The main stem was between 4 and 5 feet wide and the upper limbs had grown into mini-trees. Claire got in touch to see if the wood was of any use and this seemed like a good opportunity to bring different parts of a tree to BPCG.
One Snowy Day in March 2018 we arrived to begin our work. Brendan, the very helpful tree surgeon, had left sections long enough for us to work with, to both mill boards and to take smaller diameter rounds for working green.
It all started for me with a large pollarded Ash tree in Claire’s new garden. It sadly had to go as it was too big and dangerous. The main stem was between 4 and 5 feet wide and the upper limbs had grown into mini-trees. Claire got in touch to see if the wood was of any use and this seemed like a good opportunity to bring different parts of a tree to BPCG.
One Snowy Day in March 2018 we arrived to begin our work. Brendan, the very helpful tree surgeon, had left sections long enough for us to work with, to both mill boards and to take smaller diameter rounds for working green.
We worked for 2 weeks, slicing up the main trunk and taking away or splitting the smaller pieces. Steve De St Coix, Robin Smith, Marco Windham and Tim Stevenson all helped.
Here, below, you can see Robin starting to winkle out an enormous hook embedded in the wood!
The wood was stunning. All that you’d hope for from such an interesting tree. Fungal infections were travelling from the bottom up but also from the pollarded top down.
The boards were seasoned for conversion into chair seats but in the meantime we could use the smaller pieces green to make stool and chair legs using our pole lathes.And we experimented with small shards of green ash as stool seats. Here’s Claire’s tea stool!
In July and August 2019 Anne Chataigne, Paul Shrubshall, Steve De St Coix, and Tony Jones made a chair for Claire at BPCG. We used the milled wood for the chair seat and back and the logs for other components. Everything was finally assembled and wedged together ready for its journey back to Croydon.
Thank you everyone!