Find My Local Charcoal

Why Local Charcoal ?

How is it produced ?

History & Tradition

Why use local charcoal ?

There are many reasons to choose to use Local Charcoal in preference to imported charcoal and other barbecue fuels

Maintain a traditional rural craft

Charcoal was the world’s first industrial fuel (for metal working). It has been produced and used in the UK over much of the last five thousand years. During this time there has been increasing pressure on timber supplies and use of land for agriculture, both of which have made necessary the effective management of woodlands through coppicing. Coppice material was of regular size, was easy to handle and required minimal recutting. Collection and preparation of the right timber was important to ensure consistent high quality. Denser broadleaved hardwoods were preferred since they produced a high quality charcoal which would burn hotter for longer.

Woodcolliers mostly operated and lived in the woodlands stacking the coppiced wood to create a pile or “clamp” over six feet tall and twenty feet across which was covered in turf and earth to control the burn. Great skill and experience was required to carefully tend the burn both day and night for up to a week to create pure charcoal rather than a pile of ash. A sudden change in wind could result in a flare-up and the destruction of a week’s patient work so they often worked in pairs, one keeping watch whilst the other slept nearby.

Experimentation in the conversion of coal resulted in 1735 in the creation of coke. This new fuel quickly became preferred and contributed to the decline in use of charcoal. Within a century most of the furnaces had converted and over four thousand years of charcoal use as an industrial fuel came gradually to a close. Sadly, this combined with a decline in demand for woodland coppice produce left most ancient woodlands, especially in southern England, abandoned coppice with declining wildlife.

A.A.Milne, famous for his stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, immortalised this rural craft with his poem “The Charcoal-Burner” published in 1927. It is believed the poem was based on a woodcollier who lived and worked near Ashdown Forest in Sussex, but already he was part of a dying breed. In the year 1282, there were nine hundred charcoal burners in the Forest of Dean alone; in 2002 there were less than three hundred in the whole of the UK.

Thankfully, a recognition of the benefits of coppiced woodland and ecological impacts associated with imported charcoal is helping to support these woodcolliers, maintaining local jobs and craft skills. Small and mobile metal kilns, introduced after the First World War to reduce the burn time to less than 24 hours, increase yields and improve safety, are now most often used instead of the traditional clamp, yet all the skills and experience are still needed to control the burn and the resulting quality of the charcoal. Many people believe that retaining our countryside heritage with locally based industries promotes a greater sense of wellbeing amongst the community, forging links between our pasts and our futures. Over the last few decades the ancient woodland industry of charcoal burning has been relegated to museums, while we continue to import charcoal from tropical rainforest swamps. Think this is crazy? Then think local for charcoal.

Photo: Charcoal Burner working with metal ring kiln, Aldermaston, Berkshire, circa 1940. Picture courtesy of The Museum of Rural English Life, The University of Reading. www.merl.org.uk

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