"Rush Cutting", engraving from
"The Thames from its rise to the Nore",
Walter Armstong, 1885

With a long history of use in many parts of Britain as a floor covering and for basketry, local records show that the harvesting of rushes from the River Stour in north Dorset, in the vicinity of Marnhull and Sturminster Newton, is an ancient craft stretching back several hundred years. Whilst harvesting was traditionally a man’s job, rushwork employed both skilled craftsmen and women, as a full-time occupation, and provided work and extra income for a larger number of people over the winter months. Children were also involved in these activities. It is known that the plaiting and coiling of rushes for the manufacture of log baskets, was being taught to boys in Blandford St Mary in 1902 and it has been suggested that a similar class or school may have existed at about this time in Marnhull, teaching girls to make hassocks for church use.

Drawing on information that had been gathered in the early 1930s, "The Marn'll Book" published in 1952, recorded that rushwork or "rushing" had been 'a very flourishing industry ... The rushes were cut from the River Stour, let out in bundles to the cottagers, who plaited them [for making into] many useful articles - viz., bedroom mats, hearth and door mats, pew cushions and hassocks, shopping and workmen's baskets, chair-seats and bee-hives'. The book adds 'These goods were all in great demand, being sold at all the local markets, and sent as far as Shaftesbury, Frome and Portsmouth'.

Another document (which won 4th place in the Marnhull Women's Institute Village History Competition in 1984) records that in 1953 'the Queen very graciously received ... the gift of a rush basket to mark her Coronation Year'. It also gives details of the last local man to harvest and make a business from rushes, Ron Crew, who, before he died in 1964 'sent many baskets to the Dartington Hall Craft Shop at Totnes and ... also supplied wine firms with their rush covers for special wines'. Looking back on his life, Ron's eldest daughter Hazel Rowe, recorded that her father, who sewed plaits together with a needle made from the prong of a garden fork, also supplied several department stores in London, including Liberty's, with log baskets and that his work 'went all over the world'.

Until the RushWorks project was set up, it is believed that no rushes had been cut since the 1960s from this region of the River Stour and knowledge of the sustainable industry they supported had all but disappeared. A small quantity of rushes are now harvested each year from the river, where permission has been given for this to be done in perpetuity. To mark the harvests of the first two years "rush-bearing" celebrations were held in September 2006 and 2007, in collaboration with the Wessex Morris Men and the Sturminster Newton Cheese Festival.