Our Woodland Sawmill Story

WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT TREES AND WOOD

As one of the long-established English sawmills, we value our timber industry heritage. It traces a path from then to now, reminding us to reflect on where we’ve come from and – most importantly – it drives us to keep moving forward.

A LITTLE BIT OF THE ENGLISH WOODLANDS TIMBER STORY…

Our history can be traced back to the forestry companies that emerged in post-WWII 1950s Britain, as national forest industries were booming.

Oakover and Wealden Woodlands were two companies providing management services across Kent and Sussex in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Our very own Keith Seymour worked for Oakover, a company that still operates a tree nursery in Maidstone, Kent today.

Across the UK, thousands of men were engaged in the clearance of “redundant” broadleaves and the establishment of new conifer plantations created to meet the surge in demand.

All felling was done by hand up until then – with axes and cross cut saws – but into the 1960s and 70s, forest machinery crept into use. Chainsaws were used instead of handsaws. Small tractors replaced horse teams for transporting logs to roadside. Forestry moved towards mechanisation.

In those days, when trees were felled and logs brought out of the forest, timber lorries had to be loaded by gangs of workers with winches – a far cry from the state-of-the-art machinery built into RT lorries now.

During this period in time there were scores of local sawmills processing enormous volumes of locally available wood. In the mid-late 1960s the two companies, Oakover and Wealden Woodlands, merged to become English Woodlands Ltd.

At the same time there was a beneficial tax regime in place which allowed woodland owners to manage their woodlands at little more than net cost. This provided a big boost in employment for foresters everywhere. As a company, English Woodlands employed dozens of foresters across southern England to fulfil the new demand for woodland management services.

In 1983, English Woodlands acquired one of the many active local sawmills in the area, then named The Sussex Resaw Company at Cocking Sawmills. Then, in 1986, the two operating Directors, Hugh Gent and George Marchand, bought out the sawmill business incorporating as English Woodlands Timber Ltd, creating the company we know and love today.

No sooner had they got their partnership underway than the following year saw the great storm of 1987. This set the country in chaos and delivered huge volumes of windblown timber into the already at-capacity sawmills. The timber needed processing and English Woodlands Timber focussed solely on milling and supplying other local sawmills with stocks of round timber well into the late 1990s.

Once volumes of recovered storm logs were cleared the company diversified into providing more management services alongside the well established milling business. It was at this point our Managing Director, Tom Compton, was appointed to bring forest management back into the heart of the business, which he has certainly done!

Some years later and the company is steadily building on its excellent reputation for professional forest management services.

Tom’s partner, Ian McNally, has taken the timber business forward, streamlining the site at Cocking and growing the online stock and ecommerce offering. This leaves Tom free to do what he loves best: professional forestry.

Whilst sharing the business Ian and Tom have realised a long time goal of launching a standalone forestry business in English Woodlands Forestry which they can both be proud of. It sits alongside a traditional Sussex timber business with a long history of supporting productive woodland management and providing best quality home-grown timber for furniture, joinery and building works.

We look forward to making more homegrown timber more available to our customers and to seeing more woodlands created, well managed and productive, for future generations of English Woodlands Forestry and Timber.

Contact English Woodlands Timber

We welcome you to our West Sussex timber yard by appointment. To select from our range of timber, please call 017308 16941 or email us on sales@englishwoodlandstimber.co.uk to arrange a convenient day and time.