Homegrown timber hub finds a footing

Fingle Woods, Devon – Photo Nilfanion/Wikimedia CC-BY-SA4.0
Devon’s history at the forefront of 20th century woodland thinking is on the cusp of a new chapter, with a regional local timber culture emerging across the County.
Blessed with a rolling landscape of river inlets, valleyed folds and wild moorlands, Devon is often cited as a county of contrasting geographies. Less recognised is that this diverse landscape is reflected and refracted in the contrasting range of its woodlands and forests. From Haldon Hill to Fingle Woods, and forests shadowing the Rivers Teign in the South and Taw and Torridge to the North, not to mention the expanse of the Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks, a broad spectrum of deciduous and conifer tree species can be found, despite the relatively lower than national average woodland cover of 11%. Not only this, but Devon also holds a unique place in woodland recent history. As Jez Ralph makes clear in his piece – see Further – the county and the region contain a long – hundred years even – history at the forefront of new forestry practices, woodland management and experimental species growth, whether the early Dartington Trust, the founding of the Forestry Commission and the original home of the Woodland Trust or, more recently, the South West Forestry initiative and recent and ongoing research experiments in Agro-Forestry.

From above: Halden Hill Forest – Photo Forestry England

UK Hardwoods Wood storage shed – Photo UK Hardwoods
There is an argument that in a world of changing climate, changing social attitudes, and changing economics this demand-led way of growing needs to change. The need for soil-health, for ecological balance, for resilience in the face of rapid climate change changes the ethical framework of silviculture and of woodland management. If we are to grow forests that have their future health at heart, we may need to put aside our present needs and develop a new approach that puts a more symbiotic relationship with the forest first, that changes the paradigm to a supply-led, material focused design approach.
A further layer of influence may soon come to be added to this impressive list, this time as pioneer and hub for a lively local homegrown timber materials resurgence. There are signs in the growth of a small county-wide scene and network, with momentum increasing and beginning to make an impact on a nascent regional circular Bioforestry economy. While modest, and in its early days, potentially influential elements to this jigsaw – Britain’s only indigenous glulam manufacturer, for instance, is in Crediton – are established in the county, and being joined by other operations, adding to a growing network. This Devon micro-scene is also unparalleled when compared with other counties, at least as far as England is concerned.
Walk into Devon’s UK Hardwoods yard, out along the back lanes outside South Molton, and the scent of the multiple stacks of drying timber hangs in the air. With copious mud underfoot and the quiet of the countryside, the old farming sheds may come across as yet another agricultural site lost in Devon’s predominantly rural countryside, but open the foyer door into the main storage shed and a novel sight presents itself. An entirely new timber shed sits at the far end, stacked with woods, over which expansive ‘boomerang’ shaped glulam beams reach. The walls are comprised of pairs of panels and every few yards larch posts rise up to meet the low hanging timber roof. UK Hardwoods produce a range of high-end local hardwood flooring but once through the door visitors are immediately captivated; “the building just takes over”, says UK Hardwoods’ Polly Bedford: “They come away talking about the shed” having, seemingly, “forgotten about the flooring,” the original reason for visiting. Never mind that there are no windows, nor that this isn’t exactly on the scale that is found in Middle Europe, their astonishment speaks to the effect timber buildings have on people. Moreover, what is particularly striking is that the storage shed is made from wholly local woods, all sourced, milled and manufactured from within a 36 miles radius.

This changing attitude has allowed the Woodland Trust to come into the world of timber in Devon. Traditionally focused on ecology, conservation, health and wellbeing, the Woodland Trust own a broad range of woodlands all of which need management, many of which need some material extraction to bring them into better management. They have resources of beech which they have few markets for and whose heavy shading may not be considered ecologically optimal. Beech which is threatened by increasing periods of drought. Western Hemlock which naturally regenerates so freely it out competes not just other trees species but also herb layers so vital to soil health. Alder which many are planting as Ash replacement as ash has succumbed to disease that proliferates in our milder winters.
The storage shed’s realisation was down to chance as much as design. Originally, UK Hardwoods’ current head, Tom Bedford, had received planning permission for a steel frame building, but hadn’t taken things further. When a larch stand in a woodland run by his brother was infected by Phytophthora ramorum, the disease doing untold damage to Britain’s larch and other hardwoods species, he received a Government felling order and seized the opportunity to use the timber.
The yard – photo (and above and below) Oliver Lowenstein

Bedford, a frustrated designer passionate about woods and the environment, was already losing sleep on how he could have been using local timber for this next phase of his timber business when the opportunity to do something with his brothers’ wood appeared. In a way this was fortuitous as the diseased larch would otherwise have been chipped for biomass. “[the disease] kind of rescued it”, explains Bedford. Once felled, the wood was transported to UK Hardwoods, stacked, left for a year to eighteen months to season and then for another four months of air drying.
Buckland Timber, Britain’s only glulam manufacturer, only twenty miles away in Crediton and calling up its founder, Robin Nicholson. Nicholson asked Bedford, for a design, which he duly sent. The project started in earnest soon after.
An admittedly simple design, Bedford’s glulam portal frame structure won’t, as one observer put it, be found online on Dezeen any time soon. However, in the Devon context where an all-local timber building of any scale is unheard of, UK Hardwoods wood shed still shines.
Timber was also sent on to Bowden and Tucker joiners in Ashburton for joinery manufacture into casement windows and doors. Bowden and Tucker were selected for being interested in using more locally derived timber having undertaken some work with beech and local softwood and who produce regular volumes of windows, doors and staircases. It was important that the joinery came from a site used to using more regular imported softwood and heartwood to give a comparison.
A full suite of test building products including structural and joinery items has now been developed with the timber not leaving a 25km radius of its source. This has been enabled by having small businesses that can provide flexibility, are naturally able to innovate responsively and could work with a diverse suite of species. It has enabled timber that has come from ecologically focused management at the Woodland Trust to enter the timber construction supply chain.
Some five lorry loads of sawn larch was transported to Crediton, where Buckland Timber strips of wood stacked together make the glulam beams, the glue left to dry overnight, before the straight timbers were turned into the 18 metre curved ribbed beams. The beams may be the sheds most dramatic element but the locally and natural material extends far further. “Cladding is half the building”, says Bedford. The 37.5m long storage shed walls consist of bays, each with two prefabricated 3m larch panels packed with 150mm thick Thermafleece sheep’s wool insulation, while larch posts punctuate each bay rising from concrete stands. Inside, an even 21 degrees – household temperature conditions – can be maintained year round, so that the kilned flooring can be stored before going straight out on orders.
The storage shed went up over four days. With the panels prefabricated offsite, in collaboration with another local outfit, Wedgewood Buildings, and then slotted between the posts, after which the beams were dropped onto the posts. “It was a really, really quick build time. Everything fed perfectly and went together very well”, reports Bedford. The shed is also easily dismantlable and can easily be taken apart, “there’s nothing toxic in it.”
The result is a regional showcase for the partnership between UK Hardwoods and Buckland Timber, demonstrating their respective products, skills and expertise. It is on the doorstep, for Devon and from Devon, demonstrating what is possible at a local level. Both storage shed and partnership are an example of what could be, and for what many is a wholly improbable future; Devon’s building culture shifting towards timber and natural materials and in the process becoming self-sufficient. Improbable yes, but moving the dial a micro-notch closer to the possible.


Larch wall panels – photos UK Hardwoods

From sketch to Sketch-up – (Tom Bedford and Buckland Timber)

“The Southwest has tremendous potential” says Bedford, “the problem is lack of finance. Grants for timber just don’t exist, it’s an ignored sector”. Across the county there’s considerable farming land with poor quality soil, suited neither for arable nor pasture, and where this pertains, Bedford is sure this would be better suited to tree planting. “There’s no reason not to use timber really. There may be problems with the groundworks, including the ground being sodden with cattle manure, but [timber] above six foot could be used in many, many ways”.
That said, he underscores a general perception: timber as either building material or as a growing option hasn’t registered in the psyche of the agricultural world. He runs through a set of suggestions, such as reclassifying softwood as crops, that could reduce some of the risk of turning farming land into forests, making such moves more realistic and palatable.
“Actually, I’d like to build a factory,” Bedford muses, regarding the agricultural and industrial sheds. “It’d need to be automated”. He’s already some way there. The week after my visit, contracts were exchanged on a Thermowood plant. “It could all go wrong, but we’ve done the calculations”. Bedford states the idea coalesced and developed due to the sheer volume of enquiries for heat treated wood. After years of directing people to other sources, he decided it was the next strategic step, anticipating poplar and ash as the main source woods. Confident that there’s enough prospective demand for several heat treatment plants countrywide, Bedford doesn’t see himself as competing with Vasterns’ Brimstone Thermowood, the only other British producer of modified wood to date. October is pencilled in as the start date for being up and running, and by the time they are, UK Hardwoods will be an inside-outside operation offering external cladding as well as their core flooring material.
The result is a regional showcase for the partnership between UK Hardwoods and Buckland Timber, demonstrating their respective products, skills and expertise. It is on the doorstep, for Devon and from Devon, demonstrating what is possible at a local level. Both storage shed and partnership are an example of what could be, and for what many is a wholly improbable future; Devon’s building culture shifting towards timber and natural materials and in the process becoming self-sufficient. Improbable yes, but moving the dial a micro-notch closer to the possible.
Listening to Bedford unburden his dreams regarding timber futures, the notion of Devon and the immediate Southwest as an epicentre of a forest enhanced regional Bioeconomy feels just a mite less outlandish, and indeed, a mite less unhinged. Forestry England only provide a statistical figure for wood cover Cornwall and Devon combined, currently 11%, which is lower than the national average. But, what is lost in size is made up for through the wealth and diversity of its woodlands, the soil from which the lineage of organisations has grown. A mix of Forestry England, conservation charities, private woodlands, woods and forest range from Forestry England’s aforementioned Haldon Forest overlooking the western edges of Exeter, the Woodland Trust’s Fingle Woods and other woods up the Bovey and River Teign valleys, to strips of Atlantic Ocean facing woodlands along the North coast, those hugging the River Taw and Torridge valleys, as well as further east, the ancient, if not original, old growth woodlands concentrated on the Blackdown Hills. Furthermore, in the middle of the county there’s Dartmoor National Park’s wilder upland terrain, with one eighth, or nearly 12,000 ha, covered in wood, overwhelmingly with forestry’s prime migrant incomer, Sitka spruce. Unsurprisingly, Sitka is the region’s main softwood, providing 40% cover, but Devon is primarily a broadleaf county; 2022 NFI figures document a figure of 64% deciduous, consisting primarily of oak (19%), followed by ash (10%), larch (3%) and sweet chestnut (2%) – all by stocked area.
How many woodland owners either know or want to know statistics about their generally small woodlands is another matter, which at the very least is an uphill struggle, working against the inertial weight of the status quo favouring imports. These include the larger West Country suppliers, like East Brothers, near Salisbury, from which imported French oak makes its way west due to its superior quality and grading class, or Beech Bros, a major timber merchant in Exeter also supplying the peninsula. And in one of those ironies where fact outstrips fiction, Europe’s Norbord headquarters, a leading manufacturer of OSB, MDF and chipboard (owned by Canadian conglomerate West Fraser) was until recently also on South Molton’s outskirts, a literal stone’s throw from UK Hardwoods.
Different yet comparable, in part coming out of the post-XR radical climate emergency energies coursing through the current generation, is Woodlab, alongside a string of related initiatives. Designed by onsite architects, Workshop Collective (or WoCo), Woodlab was founded by Alex Tempest and sits within Dartington Trust’s campus grounds. Born and growing up around Totnes, Tempest, having travelled and taught, became immersed in social forestry and its educational potential. He “begged, borrowed and stole from myself” to set up Woodlab, in effect a timber focused Makerspace, which could draw a community together and act as a catalyst for reviving a local wood culture. Finding support from within the Trust, he was offered an ex-tractor shed which has been externally decked out in fetching, if basic, shingles and inside with machinery. Tempest sees Woodlab as a catalyst for connecting and growing the community of makers, users and myriad ‘woody’ types and helping expand a conversation about the future of social forestry – Further see Alex Tempest’s piece here.

Photo – Woodlab
Inside, natty Woodlab posters hang from the walls, explicit statements of radical forestry intent, which highlight the local sourcing and species, with Tempest uncompromising in setting ethical boundaries. “We don’t use foreign, exotic and MDF wood”. Larch and ash are a focus, including on his own home – see here – and is currently working with a local multi-disciplinary planning agency, TerraPerma-Geo, on community housing projects, with self-build and Wikihouse principles fused with locally sourced timber and other Biobased materials.
Tempest frames Woodlab as one node in a larger regional network; he references the Architectural Association’s Hooke Park outside Bridport and Bristol’s Oak Framing Training Forum, run by Nigel Howe, but it doesn’t take much imagination to envisage this equally as a more local Devon-wide network, perhaps tacked on to libraries and community centres. It could provide the physical training infrastructure for wider wood-based timber work and would certainly be another piece in the jigsaw. There are, after all, enough carpenters prolifically spread across the county.

At Buckland Timber – preparing UK Hardwoods storage boomerang glulam beams – Photo Buckland Timber
What Coaker would make of Buckland Timber, were he to make his way down from Dartmoor, stirs the imagination. In distinct contrast to many other of these West Country timber operations, found more often than not at the end of narrow lanes in deep countryside or down a stony track and within a farm yard, Buckland Timber’s operation sits at the far end of a large industrial estate, on the edge of the market town, Crediton.
Founded in 2013, Buckland Timber is run by CEO, Robin Nicholson, a trained building engineer and part of a forestry family. His father, he says, was a ‘tree person’, with the family owning about 500 acres of woodland. This included a very old shed which had once been a sawmill. Nicholson senior was in cahoots with another wood man, Bill Blight, a Southwest forestry boffin with a history of running timber businesses, and together they begun to talk about reinstating the sawmill and heard about glulam, thinking ‘maybe we could do that’. Research identified second-hand machines, and they travelled to Germany to buy a Hoxil finger-jointing assembly line, for around £150,000, “and everything else”, uncovered in factory in Rucksee, Bavaria. With the machinery in place, they began manufacturing glulam straight away in 2013, providing a low tech, bespoke and niche service.

Beech woods, mid-Devon – photo Jez Ralph
Still, one can hope that entrepreneurial efforts of the likes of Bedford will count for something. South Devon architect, Cameron Scott, likewise points to how relatively straight-forward regional wood-waste could be as a material source for wood-based insulation, like on the continent. Scott also talks up regional factory networks, fed with a significant stream of thinnings, offcuts and other unused low value wood currently going to be burnt could be diverted. St Gobain, one of construction’s corporate giants producing mineral insulation, require a production facility every 200 miles, so a comparable regional network could work, at least in theory.
How much of a difference these sorts of production networks would make to employment and jobs is moot. Bedford talks up the need for automation, not exactly an employment multiplier, but with literally thousands of small woodlands scattered across Devon and the South West, these too could potentially help with the perennial challenge of job creation. Closer towards the South Coast is a different kind of project which also helps to address the future of work, as much as the future of skills.

Picking up on Tempest’s local timber manifesto, yet different again, is a current Evolving Forests and The Woodland Trust’s current research partnership exploring three native tree species; alder, beech and hemlock. One segment of the research brief (which full disclosure, this Annular Devon edition has also been supported by) was to prepare and test non-traditional productive timber species for their [material] properties against interest and commercial application for a variety of components and building materials. A set of first prototypes have now been manufactured, including doors, window frames, flooring and smaller construction components in each species’ materials. The evaluation is in its early phases, the plan being to get feedback from makers and manufacturers regarding each test material. This far in, the samples have received a positive and interested response, including during a showing at this year’s Alliance for Sustainable Building Products Healthy Buildings conference – Further – see Jez Ralphs in-depth piece on the research here.

One person that you won’t hear banging this particular drum, though, is farmer and saw-miller Anton Coaker. Part of the fifth generation of his family farming sheep at Sherberton Farm, one of the ancient tenements on Dartmoor, Coaker also writes regularly for the Western Morning News and has contributed to the BBC and various farming publications. Over the phone he gives short shrift to any real-world shift regarding wood making meaningful inroads into the regional economy, bio or otherwise. While accepting there’s “huge potential”, he is quick to pull at holes in the case, not least human behaviour; “it’ll never happen”, he says adamantly.
Processing ten tonnes of timber, a mix of oak, sweet chestnut, ash, larch and western red cedar every few weeks, he rejects what he’s doing is worth considering as a wider template and exemplar to others in the farming community. “Why would I want other farmers to start saw-mills, they’d be competition? If twenty started doing so, maybe one or two would be capable, the other eighteen or nineteen wouldn’t know what they’re doing and go out of business, destroying the market”. He might well be right.

Although their first three years were loss-making, Buckland have become the only full-time glulam specialist producer in the country, with orders quickly stacking up. Up until Tom Bedford’s phone call, most of Buckland’s glulam was imported – Swedish white and redwood – while also milling locally sawn wood. Nicolson was sceptical about the reliability of local supply chains, compared to the likes of Stora Enso’s guaranteed just-in-time delivery. But UK Hardwoods’ big shed, along with the reasons for UK Hardwoods’ success; Brexit, Covid and the aftermath of the energy crises brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the movement towards more immediate, close to home material sources, has reset the equation. Reliable supplies and the mindset shift have also upped demand. When I visited their industrial estates sheds, two large 10 metre curved glulam beams were clamped in place in preparation for shipping north for London architects, Tonkin Liu’s, Yorkminster Visitor Centre. These increases in demand are not limited to homegrown wood, the supply of imported wood, including glulam from the continent, has also increased. Part of broader shifts, with large sawmills like BSW and James Jones supplying source materials, Buckland, perhaps more by chance than design, find themselves in an interesting situation; positioned to provide Devon and the wider peninsula with its own homegrown glulam, – if, that is, there is the interest for the buildings.
One swallow hardly makes a summer. The movement is small scale and nascent. These are only a few pieces in a far larger and elaborate jigsaw of the regional construction industry. There are no larger scale projects being commissioned, the commercial players aren’t in the least interested, with ‘cheapest, cheapest, cheapest’ ever the bottom line. Neither timber housing, nor larger scale single build projects are getting anywhere in the West Country. As it is, most of the material being produced heads up country, to line the floors of well healed customers, or for marquee projects with extra resourced budget lines.
And yet, however small, what’s happening is a signal of sorts, and a signpost. Innovation begets innovation. Maybe it will fade away soon enough, too small a wave to maintain itself, more ripple than wave. Maybe Coaker is right: ‘it’ll never happen.’ There again, climate change isn’t going to disappear any time soon either. With the need to shift to more meaningful zero carbon building only becoming more pressing, the case for regenerative approaches ought to become more evident. ‘Ought’ isn’t in any way ‘shall’, but the outline of more and more regional bioeconomy scenes can be found scattered across Europe. In England at least, Devon’s latter day small is beautiful scene is emerging as one of the more interesting. It wouldn’t take so much to turn it into one of the most exciting.
Further –
www.ukhardwoods.co.uk
www.bucklandtimber.co.uk
www.wood-lab.org
