 |
| Charcoal Burning at Wytham Chalet Robin Wilson (2012) Linocut |
The gent known as Matt-the-Thatch is well known in Wytham for a range of activities. He is a strong advocate of Oxfordshire Long Thatch and often appears on BBC talking about traditional forms of thatching. His website: Rumplestiltskin Thatching has all the information you could need about turning straw in gold. In 2011 Matt branched out into charcoal burning, taking on the role left vacant by the retirement of Wytham's former charcoal burner. Matt is active in coppicing at Wytham and in practicing all manner of traditional woodland skills. In the linocut I have made, the steam is rising from behind the Wytham chalet. Matt has to wait while it turns from blue to white (or is it the other way round?) as the moisture is progressively driven out of the wood, which is burning in the near-absence of oxygen in a steel lidded tank just out of sight. What appears to be a charcoal-burning tank in front of the chalet is in fact a neatly piles stack of off-cuts from the hand-made roof shingles which Matt cuts by hand with an axe. The shed and enclosures hold various scientific cages and contraptions which are deployed by the field ecologists from the university in their varied research activities.
