English Heritage Revives Traditional Scything for Meadows

Published: 17 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online

A traditional farming skill once familiar across the British countryside is being brought back into use by a new generation of volunteers as English Heritage launches a programme to maintain meadows using hand-held scythes.

The heritage organisation is training volunteers in the centuries-old craft of cutting grass by hand, with the first group beginning work at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset. The project is intended to achieve two goals at once: preserve knowledge of a traditional rural skill and improve meadow habitats for wildlife, including the increasingly rare shrill carder bee.

The initiative reflects a growing interest in traditional land-management techniques as conservation organisations look for ways to maintain species-rich grasslands while protecting the character of historic landscapes. At Muchelney, volunteers will combine practical meadow management with wildlife monitoring as part of a three-year partnership with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

For those learning the craft, scything offers a very different experience from modern mechanical grass-cutting. Ginny Slade, one of the volunteers who has completed the training, described the activity as both physically demanding and absorbing. The repetitive movement of the blade encourages users to develop a steady rhythm, while working slowly through a meadow creates a close connection with the landscape.

The first volunteers have been trained by professional instructors from Exmoor National Park Authority. Their instruction includes not only how to use a scythe but also how to maintain the equipment. A well-maintained scythe can remain useful for generations, making the craft itself part of the heritage that the project hopes to preserve.

Scything once played an important role in British agriculture, particularly before mechanised mowing became widespread. Workers used the long curved blade to cut grass and crops across fields and meadows, often relying on technique, rhythm and physical coordination to work efficiently.

The practice has also left a mark on British literature and cultural memory. The landscapes and agricultural communities of southwest England were central to the writing of Thomas Hardy, who portrayed rural workers and traditional farming practices in both his novels and poetry. His descriptions of haymaking and scything helped establish the activity as an enduring image of the nineteenth-century countryside.

At Muchelney Abbey, however, the purpose of bringing back scything is firmly rooted in the needs of a modern conservation project. The meadow is being managed to encourage a wider variety of flowering plants and provide better conditions for pollinators.

The shrill carder bee is one of the species at the centre of the work. The bumblebee has experienced significant declines in Britain, with the loss and fragmentation of flower-rich grasslands among the factors affecting its habitat.

The shrill carder bee depends on suitable flowering plants for food and requires appropriate nesting and foraging conditions. Maintaining a diverse meadow can therefore provide a more reliable supply of flowers throughout the season, helping create an environment in which pollinators can survive and reproduce.

English Heritage volunteers involved in the project are also receiving training from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to carry out wildlife surveys. Their work will go beyond simply counting bees. Volunteers will record which plants are flowering, which flowers the bees are using and how the insects move through the landscape.

The surveys are intended to build a clearer picture of how the meadow ecosystem develops over time. By recording changes in vegetation and bee activity, conservationists can assess whether management techniques are producing the desired results and identify areas where additional work may be necessary.

The approach reflects a wider shift in conservation towards understanding relationships between species and their habitats rather than treating individual animals or plants in isolation. Pollinators depend on the availability of food, shelter and suitable nesting environments, while the plants themselves depend on insects and other organisms for reproduction.

For historic sites such as Muchelney Abbey, maintaining that balance can be particularly important. The landscape surrounding a heritage building is part of its wider setting, and carefully managed meadows can provide ecological benefits while also preserving a distinctive rural character.

Muchelney Abbey itself has a long history. Once a wealthy and influential monastery, the site contains a number of unusual surviving features, including a thatched two-storey monks’ lavatory described by English Heritage as unique in Britain.

The conservation project adds another chapter to the site’s history by using a traditional agricultural technique to address a contemporary environmental challenge. Instead of relying exclusively on modern machinery, volunteers will use hand tools in selected areas where this approach can support the management objectives of the meadow.

The work is part of a larger commitment by English Heritage to create or enhance 100 meadows. The programme was announced in connection with the coronation of King Charles III in 2023 and is intended to increase the amount and quality of meadow habitat associated with heritage sites.

Flower-rich grasslands are among Britain’s most valuable habitats for pollinating insects. Over recent decades, changes in agricultural practices, development and land management have contributed to the loss of many traditional grasslands. Conservation organisations have consequently placed increasing emphasis on restoring and maintaining meadows that support a wide range of plants and insects.

The project also illustrates how volunteer programmes can combine heritage education with practical environmental work. Participants learn a physical skill that has largely disappeared from everyday agricultural life while contributing directly to the management of a living landscape.

For English Heritage, the benefits extend beyond the pilot project. The organisation hopes trained volunteers will eventually be able to travel to other heritage properties and use their skills in meadow-management projects elsewhere.

That possibility could help establish a wider community of people with knowledge of scything and traditional land management. It could also give volunteers opportunities to contribute to conservation work at different historic locations while developing a deeper understanding of the landscapes surrounding those sites.

The organisers are cautious about describing the initiative as a return to the past. Modern conservation has different objectives from traditional farming, and the project uses the old technique within a contemporary scientific framework. Wildlife surveys, habitat monitoring and ecological assessment are intended to determine how effectively the meadow is supporting biodiversity.

The practical experience of the volunteers will therefore sit alongside scientific observation. Their work in the meadow can help maintain the habitat, while their survey data can contribute to understanding the response of pollinators and plants to changes in management.

There is also a cultural dimension to the project. Traditional rural skills can disappear when they are no longer passed from one generation to another. Training volunteers creates an opportunity to preserve practical knowledge that might otherwise survive only in historical records or photographs.

Scything requires practice and careful maintenance, but it does not depend on sophisticated machinery. The technique can be adapted to particular conservation settings and, when used appropriately, can provide a relatively low-impact method of cutting vegetation.

The volunteers’ experience at Muchelney suggests that the appeal is not solely practical. The rhythm of the work, the sounds of the meadow and the physical connection with the landscape have become part of the attraction for participants.

For conservationists, however, the most important measure will be what happens to the meadow and its wildlife over the three-year project. The monitoring programme should provide evidence about changes in flowering plants, pollinator activity and habitat conditions.

The shrill carder bee provides a particularly useful indicator because its survival depends on the availability of suitable flower-rich habitat. If the meadow can provide more consistent resources for the species, the project could demonstrate how traditional techniques can contribute to contemporary biodiversity management.

English Heritage says the Muchelney initiative is only the beginning. The organisation hopes that the skills developed by the first volunteers will eventually be used across other sites, expanding both the conservation work and the community of people capable of practising and teaching the traditional craft.

The project ultimately brings together two forms of preservation that are often considered separately. One concerns Britain’s physical and cultural heritage, represented by historic buildings, landscapes and traditional skills. The other concerns the natural heritage represented by wildflowers, pollinating insects and increasingly threatened habitats.

At Muchelney Abbey, the two are being managed together. Volunteers trained in an old craft are helping care for a modern conservation landscape, while monitoring the wildlife that depends on it. In doing so, the project offers a practical example of how traditional knowledge can be adapted to contemporary environmental priorities without losing its historical character.