Traditional Use

Bodging is a work method that has been closely related to sustainable management of woodlands. It uses either by-products of the process or harvested materials from coppicing or pollarding. Travelling bodgers and other woodsmen manufactured a range of products on the woodland site, such as furniture, building elements or domestic utensils. A bodger’s products included:

- chairs
- hand tools
- agricultural tools and implements
- architectural fittings, such as pegs
- maritime fittings, such as thole-pins, stems, handles
- domestic cutlery, i.e. spurtles, spoons

Like most vernacular craft, woodland crafts have deteriorated through the last century and some techniques have become extinct by now in many areas.

Each wood has its particular use. Ash was used for tool handles and mining props. Cleft oak was used for baskets, fencing and building. Other applications include ladders, pegs, boat building, hurdles, gates and wheel spokes

The exhibited pilchard box (pictured right) is not strictly speaking a greenwood product, although it can be made of cleft wood. However, it is significant here in its ethnological context. Pilchard fishing was introduced to Ireland from Cornwall and with it all relevant technology and design. Boats similar to Cornish and Manx Nobbies and Nickies can be found in certain areas of the Irish west coast together with the remains of so-called ‘fish palaces’- wall structures that accommodated the presses to compact the salted pilchard in wooden boxes like the one exhibited.