Cotswold Woodland Crafts is a business partnership offering woodwork training, public demonstrations and wood products. We all have been members of the Association of Pole-lathe turners for many years and aim to promote traditional woodworking skills through training, demonstrations and illustrated talks.
We started running green woodworking courses at Westonbirt Arboretum in 2005 and have run similar courses at Harcourt Arboretum, Cogges Museum, Thistledown Environmental Centre and various woodlands in Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds.
The venue for all our courses is the Monastery Garden Woodland Workshop at Prinknash Abbey, near Painswick, Gloucestershire. Our hosts, the Benedictine Monastic Order of Monks, have been generous in allowing us to setup the workshop under the canopy of a large sycamore tree at the back of the 400 year-old walled garden.
Paul's interest in green woodwork and chairmaking started in 1993 when he attended green woodworking and chair making courses run by the inspirational teacher, Mike Abbott, in his Hunstrete and Clissett Wood workshops. In 2001 he became a full time woodworker sharing his time between the Green Man Workshop, making fine furniture, and a woodland workshop running green woodwork courses and making chairs.
On leaving school Graham served a seven year apprenticeship as a carpenter and wheelwright. He worked for a number of years in forestry and estate maintenance and in the mid 70's started working for local government in environmental health. Since 2000 Graham has returned to his roots in rural crafts.
Bob trained as a carpenter and joiner. Having graduated to a Building Surveyor, Bob retired in 1990. He then returned to his first love of working with wood and now enjoys serious hobbies of wood turning, carving, green-woodwork and pole-lathe turning. Passing on these skills is important to him and he now specialises in promoting green-woodwork, pole-lathe turning and rustic furniture skills.