Mammoth undertakings

Toby taps into his inner mammoth as he makes a few cuts that are reminiscent of prehistoric coppicing creatures

- Toby

THE ancient art of coppicing​ involves felling a tree to stimulate new growth from the stump, and it dates back to prehistoric times – long before Percy Thrower had picked up a pipe and pruning saw.

To our bucolic ancestors, the woodlands were workshops, where the straight poles of coppiced hazel, oak and ash were fashioned into homes, fences, spears and spits for the barbeque. But even before then, when mankind was a twinkle in a monkey’s eye, coppicing was the work of woolly mammoths and giant mastodon that knocked over trees and ate the regrowth for breakfast (see the panel below).