Written by hand

Six regular writers and one illustrator. Most of them still make the things they write about, and all of them answer their letters.

Editor

Maud Ellery

Maud founded The Wendmere in 2019 after twenty years editing trade journals nobody outside the trade ever read. She writes about industry, bells and the things towns forget they made.

History editor

Tobias Wren

Tobias is a former archivist who reads account books for fun. His Chronicles follow one object, recipe or guild through the centuries, footnotes and all.

Craft editor

Isolde Marr

Isolde trained as a manuscript conservator and still grinds her own pigments. She writes the Craft guides and tests every step in her kitchen first.

Field correspondent

Hal Denby

Hal walks to most of his stories. He has covered salt roads, lighthouses, forges and the last working thatchers, usually in the rain.

Essayist

Oona Pike

Oona writes the Thursday essay about repair, attention and owning fewer, better things. She is working on a book about the history of mending.

Illustrator

Wynn Ashdown

Wynn draws the arms, initials and marginal creatures you see across the magazine, including the snail who lives on the foot of every page.

¶ Pitches

Write for The Wendmere

We pay £600 for an essay and £250 for a craft guide, on acceptance. Send three sentences about the idea and one about why you are the person to write it. We reply to every pitch within a fortnight.

Send a pitch →

¶ Letters to the editor

Readers write back

We print a handful every issue. Corrections are the ones we like best.

Your piece on mending sent me to my grandmother’s sewing tin. I darned three socks and cried a bit. Thank you.
Ruth O.
Aberdeen
I made the oak-gall ink with my daughter. It went on grey and came up black by teatime, exactly as promised. She now writes everything in it.
Dev P.
Leicester
A small correction on the salt roads: the inn at Wheelock closed in 1968, not 1971. My father was the last landlord.
Margaret K.
Truro
The only magazine I read slowly on purpose. The margins are my favourite part.
Tomasz W.
Gdańsk
Please do bells again. The founders’ tuning book should be in a museum, not a barn.
Helen A.
Lewes
I am a joiner. Your Victorian sharpening routine is exactly what my old master taught me, down to the ten strokes on the strop.
Sam R.
Durham