Traditional Reed Cutting

Well it goes way back before I started. I started in 1967 as a marshman, and there were lots of marshmen around the broads. And I used the meg (?), or they used the old-fashioned scythe, very similar to this one.

(Points to scythe) That’s an old piece of wood cut out of the marsh, an alder; you go down the dyke in the wintertime when all the leaf is off and you see how it’s grown like and you see how you need the bends in it, and then this is called the boil, and that’s called a pricker, this is set up really for reed cutting, and that catches all the reed as you swing the scythe.

But traditionally this is how I started at Howe Hill in ’67, and it took me a long while to learn, because oftentimes you cut reed high, 6-8”, you’ll whip it and break it in the neck, and you’ll have to go home and mend it, so you learn by your mistakes. Hard work, winter reed-cutting. I used to come home occasionally and think, I’ve got to go tomorrow and mend my scythe; but in the finish, after about 2 and a half years, I’d be left behind with the old man when he was (marsh edge and marsh front??), and I used to be about 20 yards behind, try to catch him up, but you gradually learn. Most of the old boys were kind old boys, they were very caring, looked after you; and he was an excellent man regarding knowledge. He knew every water level on How Hill estate; that was his job really. I mean, going back to the early days, reed was sold by the fathom; a fathom of reed was five or six bunches, which meant that when they was stood up they’d have to measure six foot around the bonds. Fishermen used to cut reed. When it was rough out the sea and they couldn’t go fishing they’d come back into the Broads and they’d cut reed. And then when it’s quietened down again …I’ve got the old leather boots from years ago. Huge boots. I mean if you were to see them…amazing. Big soles that thick. But they was fishermen’s boots, but they’d be used in marshes, all leather boots. All them jobs were done, they was hodders, shore-knives, crooms, doidles (??), all those old tools that I’ve collected.

These are quite old, bout a hundred years old, old diking tools made by the marshmen, a piece of wood cut out of the marsh, called slubbers, mud-slops. And they used to shore the dikes up every 20 yards, get most of the water out, and go in the bottom of the dikes to scoop the mud out. And they’re called slubbers, mud-slops.

(demonstrating reed-cutting) You don’t force yourself, you just let the scythe do the work.

Freedom. The freedom. I like the old ways, I think the old ways are still very good ways of managing. I think there won’t be many people do it, because most people revert to the cutters and things like that; but there’s something romantic about swinging a scythe and things; boating out with a little punt, quanting down the dykes. The early days, we’d have boats called reed lighters, which would hold about 300 bundles of reed; we used to stack them on there and quant them down the river or row them, today you have an engine, don’t you? But everything was peaceful. And you had these little marsh boats, these tiny ones, which would hold about a hundred bundles of reed, and the same about sedge, again you’d quant that down the dike, and it looked picturesque, really. You’d have to get the reed from the center of the marsh out onto the staithe, with the materials they cut, so they used boats. A reed-lighter’s a flat-bottomed boat, and you can pull it on a foot of water. It’s very flat-bottomed.

It’s a fascinating job being a marshman, really.