Jane Marriott talks to Alex and Nicola Marson, who are restoring their timber-framed cottage in East Hagbourne using traditional building methods

Traditional skills are being combined to produce a modern-day sustainable form of building material.

Alex and Nicola Marson are renovating a 16th-century timber-framed cottage at East Hagbourne, and when they reached the stage of needing to source material with which to renew the original wattle and daub within the walls, Nicola searched the Internet for local conservation organisations.

Her enquiry received a reply from David Rees, manager of the Oxfordshire Woodland Project, who was able to offer a contact with the Leafield Community Woodland Volunteers. They were in the process of harvesting hazel from the coppice planted and maintained there by local people.

This community woodland was established in 2000. The hazel then planted was cut back the following year, then allowed to grow for another five and, by 2006, has produced the growth which has just been harvested.

Nicola was delighted to find a local source for the wattle.

"It is lovely having locally produced material in the house," she said.

With the hazel, came the offer of valuable advice on how to set about their task.

"David Rees came over one afternoon and showed us how to split the hazel wands he has been so helpful," Nicola added.

The couple have been carrying out much of the work on their home themselves, a project that they began six years ago, and the wattle and daub is proving a particularly interesting stage.

"It is great fun," Alex said. Although the work is not hard, the process has to be a slow one, for the daub takes five weeks to dry out."

In the material used for the daub, there is a concession to less traditional methods. Instead of the cow dung used in earlier times, the wattle here is being covered with a mixture of mud, clay and straw.

Once this stage has been completed, the walls, both inside and out, will be covered with a lime plaster.

"This is the last part of the restoration," reports Nicola. "We have worked our way through the house, with help from builders on some of the stages. We have done most of the work ourselves and have been able to learn a great deal. This is the final challenge."

"It has been very nice to be so involved and to know that the hazel we are now using is going to be there for a few hundred years, like the wattle that was there before."

Alex and Nicola's pleasure at being involved in sustainable building methods is shared by the coppicers at Leafield Margaret Cochrane, with fellow volunteers, will be continuing to tend the growing coppice.

"It is lovely to think of the hazel being used in this way," she said.

One third of the hazel is being cut on a five-year rotation. The other two sections will continue to grow for ten to 15 years, to produce longer stems for use in other traditional rural crafts, such as hedge-laying.

"There is an increasing need to source our building materials more locally and to use those that are natural and renewable," David Rees added. "Although this is just one example, the principle involved is very important."