The Sussex trug is one of those objects that feels both entirely practical and quietly symbolic; a simple wooden basket that carries with it centuries of local craft, agriculture and identity.
Traditionally made from sweet chestnut and willow, the trug is thought to have developed in Sussex as a working tool: a way of measuring and carrying produce from field to market. Its shape, which is wide, shallow and slightly curved, is not decorative but functional, designed to sit comfortably against the body and to hold everything from fruit and vegetables to tools and flowers. At one time, trugs were made to standard sizes and used as measures, from small quantities up to a full bushel.
Like so many traditional crafts, trug making was shaped by the materials of the landscape. Chestnut coppice, once widespread across Sussex, provided the timber, while willow grew in wetter, marshy ground. Together, they created a basket that was both strong and light, and unmistakably local. Today, the trug remains, not just as a gardener’s companion, but as a tangible link to Sussex’s past. And at The Truggery, a small workshop tucked into the countryside just outside Hailsham, it is still being made by hand. Lucy Pitts caught up with trug maker, Pete Marden, to find out more:
“Each bit of wood is different”
“I did a course in conservation,” Pete explains, almost by way of explanation. “I wanted to get into that, but the jobs were like hen’s teeth. So I was pretty sure I’d end up in a workshop sooner or later.”
Before this, Pete repaired clocks, another precise, practical craft, but it was the idea of working with woodland materials that drew him here.
“I thought about ways of providing an income from woodland that no longer gets coppiced. So I thought: make a product.”
And then, simply: “I found this as a job going in the Job Centre.”
Learning to work with the wood
So what is it about trug making that’s so special?
“Working with metal is easy, it does what you want it to. Wood… not so much,” he says. “It’s got its own ideas about what it’s going to do.”
There’s a pause, then a shift.
“But after starting to work with wood, I realised you can work with it and that makes it more interesting. Each bit of wood is different, so it’s not like working in a factory where every part is exactly the same.”
Inherently Sussex
The materials are local, as they have always been.
“It’s chestnut coppice, usually within about 15 miles, although actually about five miles away this year. And the willow comes as offcuts from the cricket bat makers, Gray Nicolls in Robertsbridge. They grow their own willow all over the South East. The Pevensey Levels had a lot of willow. It probably grew out of hoop making — coopers’ work.”
It feels, listening to Pete, like a web of connections, woodland, industry, craft, all still loosely tied together. It’s a lovely connection.
A measure of the land
“Once upon a time trugs were farm measures. From one pint up to one bushel.” Pete continues. Everything, wheat, produce, whatever was being grown, could be measured in a trug.
“That’s what we call the common garden trug,” he adds, pointing at one of many trug measures hanging from a hook on the wall. “That one – under-half-bushel size.”
A craft that hasn’t changed
The process itself is largely unchanged.
“A great amount is by hand,” he explains. “We use a bit of machinery for the heavier bits, but otherwise it’s pretty much as it’s always been.”
This particular workshop, The Truggery, has its own lineage. It was owned for many years by Sarah, who ran it from 1996 until recently, when her son took over. She still comes in, still part of the rhythm of the place and has written a very beautiful book, The Sussex Trug which details the history. But trugs have been made in this little workshop since 1899.
“It’s just been steady”
Standing among the finished trugs, it’s hard not to wonder whether this is a craft on the brink, one of those traditions we assume is fading.
“People have been saying that the trug making is on its way out for the last 30 years,” Pete explains. “But actually, it’s just been pretty steady all the way through.”
Steady, as we agree, is no bad thing. The real issue is not demand, but makers.
“There are only two of us left,” he says. There are others producing trug-like baskets, often from plywood, “but it’s not quite the same.”
Pete is now the sole maker here.
“My day’s are just making trugs,” he says, simply. “Although, I’m starting to ache a bit now,” he adds, with a smile.
A Sussex story, still being made
There is something deeply reassuring about places like this, about objects that have not changed, about processes that still rely on hand, eye and patience. People don’t just buy trugs. They are tactile, tangible and people seem to connect to them.
“That’s because it’s been around in Sussex a long time,” explains Pete.
In a world that moves quickly, the Sussex trug remains, shaped by the land, carried by the hand, and still, quietly, being made.
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