hutters-uk

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Woodland Hutting

Once upon a time, people across Britain had the freedom to build a weekend hut or a cabin-in-the-woods on land they rented or bought for a few pounds. All that changed in 1948 with the Town and Country Planning Acts. In Scotland, there is a growing movement to get some of that freedom back. How can we do the same in England and Wales? I think the first step is to start with cabins-in-the-woods…

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Log cabin updates from Century Wood

Log cabin updates from Century Wood

This month I’ve made two hutting related posts over on the Century Wood blog: “Storm Alex in the log cabin” and “A rocking chair”.

“I’d planned to spend most of the weekend at Century Wood before the warnings about Storm Alex started, and after a close look at the forecasts I went ahead. Despite 18 hours of continuous rain, the overnight stay was comfortable and I got a lot done on Sunday…

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Yverdon chalets

Yverdon-les-bains is an ancient spa town at the south end of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland. Near the beach area (“la plage d’Yverdon”) on the bank of the small Buron river as it approaches the lake, are a row of chalets.

In style, they are very similar to plotland chalets and huts in Britain, but with some Swiss mountain cabin styling. Just as with the equivalent huts here, they are not…

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Bid launched to bring hutting back to East Lothian

Bid launched to bring hutting back to East Lothian

“An intitiative dating back to the 1920s could make a comeback and see a hut built in a woodland near Gifford. The concept of hutting in Scotland dates back to between the First and Second World Wars. Now, plans are with East Lothian Council which would see a hut built in the southern section of Wynd Wood, to the west of Gifford.”

https://www.eastlothiancourier.com/news/18746209.bid-launched-b…

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"Huts: a Place Beyond" by Lesley Riddoch

“Huts: a Place Beyond” by Lesley Riddoch

Lesley Riddoch has been a long standing supporter of the Thousand Huts campaign in Scotland, and an advocate for a resurgence of hutting. For the past decade she was working towards a PhD from the University of Strathclyde on hutting, and her new book, “Huts: a place beyond”, is her thesis reworked into a more popular format. I think the book will be a very helpful contribution to the movement,…

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Hill Farm chalets near Bewdley

Hill Farm chalets near Bewdley

Back in July 2014 when I started this blog, one of my first posts was about Jonathan Meades documentary “Severn Heaven” from 1990, in which he visited the Hill Farm chalet field next to the River Severn near Bewdley. Almost six years to the day I went there myself and it’s still much as it was when Meades filmed it.

There are bits of the film on YouTube and here’s one of the clips, showing the…

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Broomlee Camp

A couple of years ago I revisited Broomlee Camp near Edinburgh, where I went with my school way back in 1983.

Back in the early summer of 1983, a young Iain McNab went to Broomlee Camp south of Edinburgh with most of his primary school class. They stayed there for a week, playing in the woods, being bussed into Edinburgh and off to Melrose Abbey, doing treasure hunts and an orienteering course around the grounds, and sleeping away from their families for the first time. It was also the first time I…

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"Win the wilderness" TV series

“Win the wilderness” TV series

BBC Two is currently showing a six-part series “Win the wilderness” in which British couples are competing to “win” a log cabin and the surrounding land in Alaska. It’s really an extended selection process to allow the American couple who built the cabin in the 1990s to choose who would be best suited to taking it on. More on the BBC website.

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Visiting Walden Pond

Last month I was able to visit Walden Pond in Massachusetts and the site of Thoreau’s hut in the woods from 1845 to 7. I’ve posted about it in detail over on the Centurywood.uk blog.

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Five days at the wood

Five days at the wood

I’ve posted to the Century Wood blog about a five day stay in the log cabin this month to start on the drying barn, which might be of interest to some hutters: https://centurywood.uk/2018/06/18/five-days-at-the-wood/

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Plotlands story in the Independent "A last hurrah for plotlanders, Britain's interwar guerrilla housebuilders. In the chaos and poverty of interwar Britain sprang up a hardy breed of guerrilla homebuilder: plotlanders.

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Log cabin holidays and garden shepherd’s huts Two stories in the Observer today. One about using Tiny Houses in woods for holidays, and one about David Cameron buying a shepherd's hut for his garden.

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Century Wood blog

I’m going to start posting more about my own wood at https://centurywood.uk and probably most of the forestry posts I make in the future will be there too. The first post I’ve made is about ride rewidening and a bit about coppicing by hazel and poplar.

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Lake Isle of Innisfree

Lake Isle of Innisfree

I don’t know about you, but poetry at school was a hit and miss business. Looking back, it feels as if a lot of verse was thrown in my general direction, some of which has stuck and some of which just bounced off – even when committed to memory overnight to placate a teacher. W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is one that stuck, and a couple of years ago I realised its connection to…

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The hut at Walden Pond

The hut at Walden Pond

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau built himself a hut beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts and started the process which led to “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” in 1854. This book has gone on to become a classic of American literature, held up by advocates of self-reliance, resistance to the power of the State, naturalism, and conservation; and studied by generations of school children. Even in the UK,…

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The return of the plotlands and prefabs?

The return of the plotlands and prefabs?

Interesting article by Geoff Beacon on the possible return of plotlands and prefabs, and the background to how we got into the current house price mess stoked by the planning system: Just imagine, as we do in the York Plotlands Association, that individuals could buy a plot of land for, say, three or four times its a agricultural value (e.g. £2,000), be given planning permission for that plot and…

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Urgent request to help Humberston Fitties

Urgent request to help Humberston Fitties

In 2014 I made one of the most popular posts here: “Humberston Fitties: magical but under threat“, describing one of Britain’s few remaining plotland sites on the north east coast of Lincolnshire. It was under threat from the continuing uncertainty surrounding the council’s intentions, and the possibility it might be sold to the adjacent commercial caravan park. Since then, things have just got…