David Mikhail and his partner are combining their passion for woodland and architecture by using chestnut and ash from overgrown woodland for their own new-build Passive House in Whitstable.
I’m sitting on a log of a sweet chestnut, in Combwell Wood, Kent. It is one of 40 or so coppice stands felled in winter 2021-2 by my friend Mark Herbert. Unfortunately, a lot of British Woodland today is dark and overgrown, species-poor and getting worse. But Combwell Wood is unusual. Mark is a woodsman-ecologist who lives here with his family and is its (mostly unpaid) custodian. His project to improve the ecology of this SSSI wood, by bringing it back into management, is keenly followed by Natural England.
This winter Annalie Riches and I commissioned Mark to cut down and mill the overgrown ancient Chestnut and Ash coppice stands that have been left unmanaged since the second world war. We are planning to use the wood on our own new-build Passive House in Whitstable. I am so happy whenever I come to the woodland, and to be combining architecture with our passion for the woods feels right. At Mikhail Riches we like making useful and beautiful buildings that happen to be sustainable. This modest project allows us to think about how building might also be regenerative.
Coppiced trees live much longer than standard trees. Once cut to their base, they regenerate. It’s miraculous, and it’s what woodland management has relied on for thousands of years. Small scale rotational harvesting of wood (coppicing) benefits us with its products, and wildlife, by bringing sunlight and life to the woodland floor. It always struck me as strange that nature might need a helping hand. Then I read Isabella Tree’s ‘Rewilding’, where she references the work of Oliver Rackham in explaining why this would be. Trees evolved so that big animals like mammoths and aurochs could crash into them without long term damage. Essentially, we killed off all the big mammals, and are left to do the job that they once did
Sweet chestnut has virtually no sap wood and is resistant to rot. It is usually cut every 15 years, when stem diameters are suitable for hop poles or fencing. Having been ignored for so long, these multi-stemmed stands had diameters of 300-450mm, and were in danger of falling and slowly dying on the wet Wealden clay. (Storm Eunace hit just after we’d finished). Instead we now see bluebells pushing up where the wood was dark and barren, and the stands should now regenerate, living on for future generations to enjoy and harvest in turn.
David Mikhail
Kent
Source: Architecture Today