Spindle Wood – A Sleeping Beauty?

Medieval Kendal – about 1500 A.D.

Coppice woodlands were cut regularly to supply many of the needs for homes and businesses in medieval times. They also supported an abundance of wildlife. Here we’ve planted spindle bushes and a guelder rose, underplanted with native ferns and flowering plants that would have been typically found in our coppice woodlands. 

Spindle is a small tree. But it produces the hard wood needed to make the “spindles”  used for spinning the woollen yarns used for making the famous “Kendal Green” cloth.

By the 18th  century changes to land use and woodland management meant that Kendal’s woodlands had all but gone. Even so, a “Spindle Wood” survived on the edge of Kendal until the mid-19th century. It’s gone now. Although perhaps, just like the princess who pricked her finger on a spindle made of spindle, it may only be sleeping.