Wood. It comes in all shapes and sizes for every conceivable purpose, but if you’re building a traditional, plank-on-frame boat in the UK, the Somerscale yard near Grimsby is one of the best-known places for boatbuilders to buy it. Nowadays, the yard is decidedly prosperous, employing 34 people on a 16-acre site, but its beginnings were remarkably humble and can be traced back to the passion of one man: Stuart Somerscales.
Back in the 1960s, Stuart was managing the family farm just outside Keelby, seven miles west of Grimsby, along with his father and grandfather, when it became clear that, thanks to mechanisation, there wasn’t need for all three
