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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Steven Morris

English Heritage trains new generation of scythers to maintain meadows and craft

English Heritage Thomas Hardy Somerset
Volunteer scyther James Adams cuts tall meadow grass with a scythe at Muchelney Abbey
English Heritage volunteer coordinator James Adams scything meadows at Muchelney Abbey, in Somerset. Photograph: Andre Pattenden/English Heritage/PA

It sounds like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel: a merry band of men and women roaming the West Country cutting meadows by hand in exchange for hunks of bread and cheese.

But the conservation charity English Heritage is recruiting a team of volunteer scythers to maintain 21st-century meadowland in the old-fashioned way.

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