The crafts
The crafts and traditions of England.
The archive is built craft by craft, anchored against the Heritage Crafts Red List. Some are documented and have a guide of their own. Some are coming next, on the pipeline. This is the whole map of the territory.
- Forthcoming
Swill basket weaving
The Lake District basket woven from boiled and split oak, used for centuries to carry potatoes, peat, and fish. Critically Endangered · fewer than 5 - Forthcoming
Sieve and riddle making
The hand-bound horse-hair sieve and the hardwood riddle - tools the English mill, the bakery, and the chemist depended on for two centuries. Critically Endangered · 1 working maker - Forthcoming
Currach building
The English currach - the hide-and-frame coastal boat that pre-dates the Roman conquest - is held by a tiny group of builders working with traditio… Critically Endangered · fewer than 10 -
Guide Letter-cutting in stone
The English memorial letter, cut into stone with a hammer and chisel, in the lineage of Eric Gill and David Kindersley. Endangered · ~30 working letter-cutters -
Guide Millwrighting
The repair, restoration, and (rarely) the building of windmills and watermills. Endangered · ~15 working millwrights -
Guide Thames clinker boat building
The clinker-built Thames pleasure boats and skiffs that have carried passengers up and down the river since the Victorian period. Endangered · a small number - Forthcoming
Coppice working
The traditional management of broadleaf woodland on a rotating cut, producing hazel rods, chestnut paling, hurdles, charcoal, and the kind of biodi… Endangered · ~50 active coppice workers -
Forthcoming Hazel basket making
The split-hazel Whisket of the Welsh Marches - a round-bottomed basket with a hazel-bowed handle, woven from splints cleaved out of nine-year hazel… Endangered · Fewer than 10 working makers in the UK -
Forthcoming Silversmithing
Silversmithing as a whole is still taught and practised across Britain, but the Arts and Crafts tradition of raising hollowware by hand - and the e… Currently Viable -
Forthcoming Engine turning & watch case-making
Engine turning - guilloche - is the hand decoration of metal on a rose engine or a straight-line engine, the rocking and reciprocating machines tha… Critically Endangered · a handful of working engine turners
- Forthcoming
Cathedral vergers and minor canons
The men and women who hold the keys to the English cathedral - the verger who walks the same flagstones every dawn, the minor canon who has sung Ev… Not Red-Listed - Guide
Long-tenure parish churchwardens
Churchwardens with twenty or more years of tenure at a single parish - holders of building, register, churchyard, and continuity. Not Red-Listed
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Guide Spring Equinox at Tower Hill
The Druid Order’s annual rite at Tower Hill in the City of London, performed at midday on every spring equinox since 1956. Not Red-Listed - Guide
May Morning at Magdalen
The Magdalen College choir singing the Hymnus Eucharisticus from the top of the Great Tower at 6am on the first of May. Not Red-Listed - Forthcoming
Lewes Bonfire Night
The Lewes Bonfire Society procession on 5 November - the largest, oldest, and most editorially difficult-to-document of the English fire festivals. Not Red-Listed - Forthcoming
Abbots Bromley Horn Dance
The Horn Dance at Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire - performed annually on the Monday after the first Sunday after the 4th of September, with reinde… Not Red-Listed
- Forthcoming
Chalk stream river keepers
The river keepers of the southern chalk streams - the Test, the Itchen, the Wylye, the Kennet - whose daily work maintains a freshwater landscape t… Not Red-Listed · ~80 in England - Forthcoming
Hefted flock shepherds
The Yorkshire and Lake District shepherds whose Herdwick and Swaledale flocks are hefted to a specific stretch of fell - a knowledge of grazing ran… Not Red-Listed
What comes next
Every craft above is on the project's roadmap. The ones still to be documented are funded one shoot at a time - the pipeline page lays out what is coming, what is partly done, and how a single craft's next session gets paid for.