Harvest Festival Market

Harvest Festival Market – Deans, Dibbers & Door Wedges

Location: Winchester Cathedral Close
Start Date: 2011-10-1
Start Time: 10:00
End Date: 2011-10-2
End Time: 17:00

For the second year in a row Winchester Cathedral and Close was the venue for the Hampshire Harvest Celebrations with displays, workshops, children’s activities and a children’s farm, crafts and a program of music, as well as Hampshire Farmers Market and Hampshire coppice Craftsmens Group (HCCG), Sparsholt College and the NFU who were invited by the Dean and chapter.

Hampshire Farmers Market provided a very good display with members selling local produce from fruit and vegetables to bread, pies, game, and cheese as well as assorted other goods. This was in addition to the Farmers Markets currently held in Middlebrook Street and Middlebrook Street car park on the second and final Sundays of the month.

Three Copse were proud to be representing HCCG together with Paul Brockman on the Saturday, who was making spoons and carving Wood Spirits in hazel rods. Over the two day event we demonstrated several coppice crafts including spoon, spatula and butter knife makings as well as the first outing for our new show pole lathe. There were a few teething troubles, and some slight redesigning of certain parts will be needed, but it gave a good showing on the day.

As usual our demonstrations were popular, with groups of up to 30 people stopping to watch. Because something is moving, a lathe is always a popular display for visitors. Although the roughing out provides nothing more than a shower of wood shavings, once the shaping of the product starts, they can see a dibber, a door wedge blank or a honey drizzler appear before their eyes.

We also had our shave horse, chopping block and associated tools there. Children in particular found it fascinating that the spoon or spatula came from the log of wood they saw by the chopping block. We were cleaving the logs with the froe, rough shaping the segments by cleaving off the corners with the froe again, then taking the wood to the shave horse to make into round billets for the lathe with the draw knife.

Spoons were made from the same segments with the shaping being done by the draw knife, axe and knives. The spatulas and butter knives were cleaved as flat sheets from half or quater logs and then shaped using the same tools.

The weather was very hot, so we were pleased to be able to set up camp under one of the many lime trees that line the walks through the Close.

The usual array of questions such as "Is that a chair leg you making?", and "Are you a bodger?"  were asked. It is nice that many people are now aware of the chair makers of High Wickham, but many other things are made on a pole lathe, and the bodgers were so called because they didn't finish the chair, only provided the legs, the tops of which then had to be finished to fit into the rest of the chair.

An enjoyable weekend for us, and we hope that our visitors found it interesting too. Judging from the pictures taken of the lathe, several did.