About English Oak & Willow

The Nene Valley at sunrise in June

Why “English Oak & Willow”? These trees at ubiquitous with the English countryside and have been used extensively in rural building and crafts. The English Oak & Willow Blog explores the countryside where these magnificent trees grow and the buildings and crafts that use them as well as many other trees, plants, stones and all things traditionally English and rural. 

A little about myself. I live in the rural English Midlands and often fish the rivers, streams and lakes. I work with an environmental and community group maintaining a large and old orchard as well as many other sites. I visit historic buildings and other sites of interest. This blog will bring the English countryside and crafts to you with information about how you can be involved or just enjoy seeing the old ways being kept alive.

Wakerley Great Wood in early autumn

'Preserve all local sanctities of place and oral tradition as you can. The antiquary may be trusted for the one: but words and myths have many foes and vanish before the schools, like ghosts at the grey breath of morning. The morning is welcome, yet I morn the death of many pleasant ghosts, slain with bell, book and candle of unimaginative learning. In folklore of fairies, in good wishing and evil wishing, in charms of hurt and healing, in simples gathered at right seasons under sun and moon, in churchyards and legends and natural things set to supernatural use, much appears that influenced the lives of the old people, who were born in belief of these spells and mysteries. They reacted on character; and you who write of such legends, hold none too archaic or grotesque to set down in its place; for these things fall quicker than the elms at March, and cannot be recovered. Hourly they perish, in the withering brains of ancient men and women and are lost for ever.'

A Shadow Passes - Eden Phillpotts, 1919