English Heritage trains new generation of scythers to maintain meadows and craft

English Heritage volunteer coordinator James Adams scything meadows at Muchelney Abbey, in Somerset. Photograph: Andre Pattenden/English Heritage/PA English Heritage volunteer coordinator James Adams scything meadows at Muchelney Abbey, in Somerset. Photograph: Andre Pattenden/English Heritage/PA English Heritage English Heritage trains new generation of scythers to maintain meadows and craft Initiative aims to keep alive age-old skill, and at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset improve habitat for rare shrill carder bee

Prefer the Guardian on Google It sounds like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel: a merry band of men and women roaming the West Country cutting meadows by hand in exchange for hunks of bread and cheese.

But the conservation charity English Heritage is recruiting a team of volunteer scythers to maintain 21st-century meadowland in the old-fashioned way.