The People
The wood is owned by Emily Charkin and Dan Morrish. Dan is an architect who loves to build - he designs and builds the amazing timber buildings you see around the wood. Emily is a researcher who loves to make things happen. She looks after the home-team, members, the Hatch and Friday Club for local home educating families. She tries to squeeze in some time for her research on experimental schools and communities. They live in the house with their children Frank (21), Nina (19) and Xandi (15) who come and go - but are often here for Stewardship Saturdays and Working-with-wood-week.
Jake and Kate Reed are woodland caretakers in residence - looking after everything from the ditches and the kitchen garden to the updating of the website. Kate’s son, Bohdan, attends St Mark’s School in the village and is a keen kindling maker and Reina (3) is the first child who began her life at Wilderness Wood. Mike Bracken and Josh Miller are current woodland apprentices; Kent Thodsen is green woodworker in residence; Bea Everett is musician in residence: and Anton Forward is gardener in residence. Everyone also takes a turn at cooking and wood splitting - the basics of community life in the woods!
Other enterprises based at the woods include: Andrew Coates has been working at Wilderness Wood for 30 years, coppicing a coop of the wood each winter. He now runs his own enterprise providing woodland products and services for land-based projects all over Sussex; Martin Brockman and Simon Page are woody artists with a base at the woods; Mary Singleton of Stay Wild stores bell-tents and a marquee at the woods.
The wood is also the hub for a community of around 250 member households who help us look after the wood in exchange for using the site for creativity, enterprise and fun.
Photo credit: Beth Wild