Dave French is the fifth generation in his family to hand craft Withy Pots, otherwise known as crab pots. Once a means of income to his forefathers, making Withy Pots is now termed a heritage craft, and Dave is one of around only ten people in the UK to be continuing the tradition. I met Dave with his uncle Gerald Mears (pictured above) in Budleigh Salterton, the fishing village where Gerald, and his brother Geoff, Dave’s grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather were all local fishermen, making their own Withy pots by the sea in which they fished, and bringing their catch home to be cooked and sold by their wives.

I was born at Number 8, Meadow Road, Budleigh

Salterton in the March of 1958, in my Grandparents house. ’

Dave tells me, ‘As a small boy I watched my Grandfather make his last Withy pot. As

the years went by I used to pester my uncle into showing me how to make them, and for many years he didn't want to

know as it was something best left to the past and forgotten,

eventually he relented and we started making the pots again.’ So Dave, now retired from the Wrigley Co., makes Withy pots out of willow from Budleigh, or from Somerset, and demonstrates them at shows such as the Brixham Fishstock Festival. Each Withy pot takes around four hours to make, Dave makes one from beginning to end at each Festival, to promote and demonstrate the skill. He also takes commissions from customers such as artists, local pubs, and seafood restaurants. I was interested to hear from Dave and Gerald about how the Withy pots would once have been produced and used in his forefathers’ days. The Mears family would all work as a team. The willow, grown at home, was cut down after the first frost of the year, and the Withy pots were made in January, February and March. The family would make the pots together, producing four a day this way, and aiming for forty pots for each season. The fishing

Dave French and the Mears Family East Devon Withy Pots By Annabelle Priest, South Devon Fish

Dave’s Grandfather , Walter, with Dave as a baby

From right to left: Walter Mears (Dave’s grandfather),

Walter Mears Senior (Dave’s Great Grandfather), Herby

Mears (Dave’s Great Great Grandfather)

Dave French and his uncle Gerald Mears with a

Withy pot made by Dave

boats in those days (up to the 1950s) could hold only 40 pots at a time, and the pots were usable for around a season to a season and a half, with careful mending. Bait was placed in the bottom of the pots, and the design of the weave and opening are such that crabs and lobsters can enter but not exit. The crab and lobster fishing took place from March to September due to the weather, the size of the boats and a carefully managed sea farming system. Gerald explained more about this system to me:

‘Budleigh, like all the small fishing towns, only used small inshore boats launched from the beach so had to work with the

weather and tide. The sea was farmed and like (land) farming the crop was rotated. Crab/

lobster, herring, mackerel and scallops each were dependent on the other and the vital coral on the sea bed was the key to it all. The herring and mackerel, like other species, used the coral to lay their eggs, the scallops and the crab etc tended to

stay close and migrate in a certain path along the sea bed. Be-cause the pots were worked by hand and the scallop dredges were pulled by low power boats, damage to the sea bed was

minimal.’ In the 1960s Withy pots such as those made by Dave and his forefathers, were dying out, replaced by box wood and net square pots. Nowadays the crab fishing industry is a very different enterprise, but Dave is keen to teach as many of future generations as possible the skills developed by fishermen of the past. Dave said,

‘It is nice that my craft is now considered something to be treasured and looked after, though for how long I do not know

as I can only trace about 10 of us in the country that can still make Withy pots

this way, I am the youngest at 56 and the oldest is 80, no one else seems to be interested in taking

this skill forward as there is no money to be made, and you work outside in all weathers between January and March when the Willow is green, so as I tell people, enjoy it now be-

cause I fear it will in time disappear, I have seen some made and sold in the tourist shops but they are poor examples and would not last more than a couple of days if put to work!’ Dave then took me into Gerald’s garden to show me a Withy pot he had made. An incredible feat of weaving, there is a carefully organised pattern to each pot that ensures it can withstand the tidal force, the scuffing on the sea bed, and that it can catch and then hold captive the crabs and lobsters.

Dave explains to me that he has been asked to write down the method for making a Withy pot but has found it all but impossible, This was something you learned from father to son and by trial and error, the willow is a living thing and each

one is different in the way it wants to bend and be worked. Also as the months go by and it starts to dry it behaves totally different from when it is green and needs soaking in order to get it pliable again. It took me about

three years to make a pot I was proud of, because you only have 3 months to make the pots in each year so the

following year you have to start all over again!’‘

This is an art form that may now have lost its practical application to the fishing industry, but surely is an important legacy to it. Withy pots may have been superseded by technological ad-vances but the style of fishing they once symbolised is echoed in our contemporary aspiration for sustainability in the modern fishing industry.

Dave’s latest Withy pot

Gent Mears. at work on a Withy pot