Wildwood; A Journey Through Trees
Having personally shaped or repaired every single one, I have ended up on terms of the greatest intimacy with all the beams, posts and pegged joints in the place. I have perhaps also earned some kinship with the people who, twenty years or so before Shakespeare was born, originally built the house and probably dug out the moat. Uncovering the carpenters' coded inscriptions on the rafters and floor beams was like finding a lost manuscript. They were carved when the oak or sweet chestnut was still...