A group of 14 Questers visited the Coates English Willow Farm and production facility at Stoke St Gregory near Taunton on Monday 23 September 2024. The journey was made in the Unity minibus with the ever supportive and able Robert Kemp as our driver. The weather was not helpful as Robert had to contend with periods of heavy rain for large parts of the 1 ¾ hour journey each way. However, as always, he delivered us safely there and back again afterwards.
It was an early start and the minibus got underway from the meeting point at Wickes on schedule just before 08:30. Fortunately when we arrived at Coates there was little or no rain. A tea/coffee break was enjoyed at the Lemon Tree café before our guided tour started at 11:00.
Roxanne was our guide for the tour which started in the shop where she gave a brief history of the Coate family which has been producing willow since 1812. Through marriage they combined with the Boobyer family to establish the present company which grows and processes willow and makes furniture and many other items of woven basketwork for the past 200 years. Roxanne also explained the planting process and how the willow is grown and harvested. She then went on to explain how the three primary colours of willow are produced.
We then commenced the tour of the processing and production facilities to see how the various steps are undertaken. The tour included see how artist’s charcoal is produced and learnt that Coates produces 80% of the world’s artist’s charcoal. The tour ended by viewing the weaving process where 5 weaving craftspeople were producing willow woven products. A large part of this wok nowadays is the production of willow coffins and several designs were being produced in the weaving rooms.
After the tour was completed we returned to the Lemon Tree café for lunch. Members had been asked to place their order for lunch in advance so the service was quite quick and food good.
After lunch most members watched a video which shows the entire willow process from planting to final weaving which served to reinforce the information from the tour. This was followed by a visit to the willow museum which was very interesting and showed the huge diversity of uses of woven willow over the past 200 years. Many members ended the visit by purchasing items of basketwork from the shop.
Our return trip was again quite wet but Robert handled the drive with skill and professionalism. We were safely returned to Wickes car park again at around 16:45 as scheduled.
Thanks to Chris Coffin for organising the outing which was enjoyed by all of us. Unfortunately, he was not able to join in on the trip itself.
Cecil Rose
