"For position, Staunton Harold, the house and the chapel, are unsurpassed in the country - certainly as far as Englishness is concerned" Pevsner, The Buildings of England.

'Money doesn't grow on trees', very true, and nor does their timber make the owner very rich; high labour costs and cheap imports from well wooded countries make sure of that. Most owners love their woods, and manage them despite the poor return. Here at Staunton Harold we have about four hundred acres, and manage them in a traditional way.

To do this we have our own sawmill, a rarity these days, and a team of foresters who spend their days planting and thinning, felling and sawing. The bigger trees find a ready use in house and barn construction, with some trees planked for furniture making and joinery. More problematic are the young woods, planted after opencast coal mining about twenty years ago.

These trees have reached the stage where they are crowding each other out. About half of them need taking out, to allow the rest to spread their branches and light to reach the forest floor. This benefits birds and other wildlife The problem is that the timber they produce is too small in size to cover the cost of extraction. One solution, sometimes used by the Forestry Commission, is called 'cutting to waste'. This means leaving the trees where they fall to rot down in the wood. The trouble with that approach is that they take a long time to rot, and create an impenetrable jungle. So, with a hundred acres to tackle, we are adopting three different approaches.

In one wood close to the Hall we are extracting the trunks to dry and cut and burn on our own fires. In another we are giving the wood to a local organization in return for doing the work. In a third we are making up bundles of five foot lengths and delivering them to customers to cut up themselves. In all these areas the difference after the work is done is dramatic - it's not just the birds but us humans too who benefit from the light pouring in

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