Astrid builds a women’s framer story

A Touchwood South West wood workshop in full swing – this and all other photos – unless otherwise stated – Touchwood South West

Women comprise a very small minority of carpenters, but thanks to the tenacity of timber framer and carpenter, Astrid Arnold, through her Touchwood South West workshops, courses and classes, the number is growing exponentially.

British timber framing has probably never been so popular since returning from its near-death experience half a century ago.  At the time on life support, fifty years on, the timber frame resurgence is in good health. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of framers who know their craft and trade and are using this knowledge on projects large and small, up and down the country. Artisans and makers are so achingly hip, that there is a new generation hungry and aspiring to get sawing, carving and cutting as soon and as quickly as they can. Never mind the rudiments or long apprenticeships.

Yet one detail to this mass conversion is blindingly obvious. It’s an overwhelmingly male phenomenon. Wherever you look, men, with a disproportionate number hairy and a mite wild around the eyes, turn up in the photos and other visual records and documents. Women are notable only in their absence. Historically, this isn’t completely true, even if framing has been very much a male preserve. Cindy Harris was a key part of the early Centre for Alternative Technology years, an influence on many who passed through – Further see the Cameron Scott feature here.  Barbara Jones, closely associated with straw bale construction, has also helped disseminate framing knowledge to large numbers of women, as well as men. Carpenter Oak & Woodland saw a number of early women at their yards, including Clare Walter. There are women carpenters to be found dotted across the carpentry world. Not many in the past, though showing a slow and gradual upping of numbers.

One of those who can claim to have done more than most to chip away at this outsized imbalance is a young German carpenter who’s made Devon her home through much of the last two decades. Since 2015, over 1500 women have attended courses and classes run by Astrid Arnold under the rubric of her Community Interest Company Touch Wood South West. Check Touch Wood South West’s website and a long list of women framers tumble off the page. Astrid’s story is one of keeping going and perseverance winning out. There were many moments when some would have given up, and it is a tribute to Astrid’s dogged determination and staying power that these courses got going in the first place. Perhaps no one more surprised by this success as Astrid.

The courses have come in different sizes, shapes and colours, one of which is Women Build!, an introduction to carpentry and DIY skills. There are the many main Touch Wood South West courses that have been running regularly, which have proved so popular that they attract long waiting lists. There are green woodworking courses she’s run for armed forces veterans, involving felling trees, and making stools and rocking chairs. There are six-week long courses run at Schumacher College, Dartington, one-time epicentre for alternative culture, and there’s Astrid’s House, the one-day children’s classes that have toured the primary schools of Devon over the last nine years. It’s an impressive record, which has brought green woodworking skills to many, many women. It’s involved keeping going in the face of low moments, which might have defeated others.

How did Arnold become so immersed in timber framing? And how did a transplanted German, a long way from her birth-place and country, come to be in Devon?

It’s been a long journey, taking in fine art, squatting and the nomadic life of the turn of the millennium new age traveller scene, all before Astrid had chanced upon green woodworking. She moved to London in 1997 for a Fine Art foundation and then degree course, but once on the latter found herself alienated by its seeming pretentiousness and irrelevance, leaving after the first year. Living in and being ejected from squats led Arnold to buy a van, with the idea of fitting it out, only to be met with the challenge of how practically to make a bed, cupboard, and various other interior furnishings. How to do so, though, was the question. She realised she needed carpentry skills and enrolled in what was at the time the only women’s carpentry training course.

The course, an NVQ Carpentry and Joinery Course within Women’s Education in Building gave her the skills to build her bed and van fit out, and lead to construction sector carpentry jobs. But, she found that she was overlooked by the all-male carpentry teams, consigned to either work on architraves, skirting and basic repetitive carpentry work and left to watch her male colleagues on the more interesting challenging work; staircases, interiors and other parts of buildings. It was both intensely boring and intensely frustrating, and Arnold recalls thinking to herself that there must be more to carpentry than this.

Gudrun Leitz’s Clissett Wood green woodworking course – photo Gudrun Leitz/Green Woodwork

The fastest peg-maker in the mild mild west

She did however start and finish her own project, fitting out the Mercedes she was living in, and at roughly the same time – around 2000 – came across a green woodworking course run by a fellow German, Gudrun Leitz in Herefordshire. Smitten with what looked like a pathway out of mainstream carpentry and something more up her track, Arnold rang Leitz up, full of enthusiasm but with neither deep pockets nor any previous green woodworking skills. She asked if there was any way, despite not having any money, that she could attend the courses.  Leitz, she remembers, asked if she had any skills, to which she replied, “yes, I can cook!” So, she headed to Leitz’s woodland base in Hereford, Clisset Wood, where she spent the summer cooking for Leitz and her students before classes, and joining in classes such as woodland chair making in the afternoons’.

Astrid, though, didn’t go back. “I thought this is it for me and carpentry. I will be always washing nappies from here on.” Instead, a new chapter began. “I’m a bit tenacious. I hate giving up,” she says of her character. Preschool provided an opportune three hours of her own time and she began sharing a workshop on a farm outside Moretonhampstead, the town she, Hugh and her young family had made home. There, she worked on some joinery, before honing in on specialising in peg making. By her own admission she became the fastest peg maker in the West. Counting, she notes that “I could do 40 pegs an hour,” a hint of pride crossing her face. For a while she became the main regional supplier, smiling now at the complement paid by Carpenter Oak’s Adam Milton that she made the best pegs he’d seen.


But, being the region’s fastest peg-maker wasn’t quite enough. Other work and commissions came in, but together weren’t paying the bills, let alone making money. She decided to sign on to a professional development course. “The course was absolutely amazing” she says now, wonderment still in her voice. It brought on a eureka moment; she “realised what I wanted to do was teach women carpentry.” It catalysed the company – Touchwood South West – and was soon organising her own first workshop course for survivors of domestic violence: “It went really well.” The workshop was also a means to an end. The women made a miniature version of a timber frame building, designed to be used as a teaching instrument in schools, christening it ‘Astrid’s House’. With her children now going to the local Moretonhampstead primary school, there was an immediate place to test the idea. Together with long term friend Ann-Katrin Hendry – a trained teacher – and input from others as well, the miniature timber frame was designed to fold into the National Curriculum in multiple ways; geography, history and maths all featured. This children’s workshop was also successful. Encouraged by this, Astrid and her colleagues received funding to organise further sessions across local Dartmoor primary schools.


Astrid’s House, and below, hands-on craft skills are part of Touchwood South West’s school’s workshop


From these small shoots a healthy tree grew. It wasn’t too large a step to expand into teaching women timber skills. Together with Ann-Katrin Hendry again, the pair submitted a successful bid for a sizeable Arts Council grant. Women Build! has enabled the regular regional workshops and courses aimed at equipping women with carpentry and complementary DIY skills. Well-attended, as they’ve taken off the span and range has expanded. At present they encompass carpentry skills, creative woodworking, working with power tools and joinery and have, she believes, really helped “open up what we can do.” To handle the demand, she’s invited various local women friends and colleagues into Touchwood, Miranda Salmon, a furniture maker and Barbara Czoch, another carpenter living in the New Forest. Two former Women Build! students and others also help support the workshops.



To date, she estimates she has taught well over 1500 women since 2015. The courses appear to have struck a nerve, with women traveling from all over the country, including the Midlands, from London and from Scotland to participate in the courses. One recent setback however, was despite receiving the Arts Council funding in 2023, Astrid and her team weren’t able to raise the remaining budget to run the workshops. Philosophical about this, her slant is that the rejection is part of a general lack of funding of the crafts. Though an obvious challenge, it hasn’t stopped the courses, their popularity ensuring survival. Not only are the courses spreading, garnering interest in the next generation. The daughters of four ex-students have been on courses, while women across all age groups have been signing up. In the greater scheme of things, Astrid says she feels realistic about the impact Touchwood South West is making, when set against the scale of the challenge: “It won’t make it the shape of diversity”, but then, from small acorns do mighty oaks grow. Though the pegs-making days are long gone, the woodworking continues, producing fitted furniture, whole house retrofits, building cabins and garden studios and fit staircases. Still, it is the teaching which has taken over.

As something of a counterpoint to the loss of funding support, Astrid was awarded building industry ‘top tradesperson’ of the year by Screwfix. The first time a woman had won the title, the award came with £20,000 worth of support. So far, she hasn’t done much with it, saying that she “needs to make good use of it.” One idea is to develop the workshops for the secondary school context. Even more ambitious is a long-term goal, a dream of creating a College for Women Woodworkers. This may be a pipedream, but Astrid, living proof that perseverance works, is as likely as anyone to get such an admirable dream off the ground.

Further – www.touchwoodsouthwest.co.uk