English Heritage Trains Volunteer Scythers to Care for Meadows and Rare Bees

English Heritage has trained its first team of volunteer scythers to maintain meadowland by hand around an abbey in Somerset, as reported on 17 September 2026. The Guardian

The first group will care for the meadow at Muchelney Abbey. The site was once a wealthy and important monastery. It includes a thatched two-storey monks' lavatory that is unique in Britain.

Muchelney is one of 100 meadows English Heritage pledged to create and enhance to mark the coronation of King Charles in 2023. The work is manual, using traditional scythes instead of machines for cutting.

Training in how to use and look after scythes was given by specialists from the Exmoor National Park Authority. Ginny Slade, volunteer and community engagement manager with English Heritage, was among the first to train.

The reward follows old custom. Volunteers receive bread and cheese. West Country cider was considered but rejected on health and safety grounds.

The team will take part in a three-year project with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to improve habitat, or living conditions, for the shrill carder bee. The species has fallen sharply because flower-rich grasslands have been lost. It is now very scarce, found only in a few scattered, isolated groups in England and Wales. Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Volunteers have also been trained by the Trust to carry out wildlife surveys, like a regular health check for nature. They will record which flowers are in bloom, which plants bees use, how far bees travel from nests, and how the habitat changes over time. The monitoring will run alongside the cutting.

Muchelney is the pilot, or trial, site for the project. Once the method is working there, volunteers plan to travel to other English Heritage sites to use their skills.

The broader context here is the pairing of historic estate care with bee conservation. Cutting by hand lets managers pick the timing and keep disturbance of the sward, the surface layer of grass and roots, low, while steady surveys show how feeding and nesting respond. For heritage managers, the volunteer group offers a labour model that could be repeated. For conservation workers, the value will lie in whether steady cutting and recording can keep flowers available across seasons for a scarce bee living in fragmented groups.