The Last 186
“My hands kept nearly six thousand people on their feet. Now they can’t hold the chisel.” — Why a seventy-four-year-old stick maker from the Chiltern Hills is letting his last 186 walking sticks go at a special price, before his workshop closes for good.
Around one in three people over sixty-five in Britain has a fall every year. A walking stick cuts that risk. But in forty years of making them, the thing Malcolm Hatherley heard most had nothing to do with pain, balance or price.
It was this: “I’ve got one. I just don’t take it out with me.”
The stick in the umbrella stand is the most dangerous thing in the house
A stick in the hallway stops nothing. And the grey ones from the hospital are the ones that stay there. Many people stop carrying them within months. Not because they broke. Because of how they made them feel.
Malcolm saw it happen in his own family in 1986. His father, then eighty, broke his hip in February. He came home with a grey aluminium NHS stick with a foam handle. It went out of the front door exactly twice.
“He’d get to the gate, look down at that thing in his hand and turn round,” Malcolm says. “He said it made him look like he was on his way to the hospital. So he stayed in. The whole spring, he stayed in. That was the year I made the first one.”
Five things a cheap walking stick gets wrong
- “The wrist breaker.” A handle that sits flat across puts all the weight on the wrist. “Hold a full kettle out at arm’s length and count to thirty,” Malcolm says. “That’s what your wrist does on every step.”
- “The announcement.” A thin rubber tip on a hollow metal tube clicks on every tiled floor. People turn round before they even see you.
- “The slippery grip.” Varnish and foam feel fine in the shop. With a warm, damp hand, they slide. That is the one moment a stick must not slip.
- “The glue line.” Most decorative sticks are a carved head glued onto a plain pole. That joint is the only thing between you and the floor.
- “The wrong length.” Push-button sticks always wobble a little. A stick should be cut once, to the person, and left alone.
The chair maker who spent forty years measuring other people’s hands
Malcolm left school at sixteen and started as an apprentice in a chair factory in High Wycombe, the town that once made more chairs than anywhere else in England. For thirty-one years he sawed, bent and sanded Chiltern beech. He learned to look at a piece of wood and see which way it would split.
His workshop today is a converted brick garage behind his cottage in Stokenchurch. The chisels hang in a row, biggest to smallest, their handles worn smooth. On the bench sits a piece of walnut with an owl half out of it.
Malcolm runs his thumb along the rough edge without looking up. “Everyone thinks the animal is the point,” he says. “The animal is just where the wood ends up. The point is the palm.”
The animal is not stuck onto the wood. It is found inside it.
First comes the shape. Big, flat cuts with a mallet and chisel, until the grip sits right in the hand. Only then does the animal appear. “Shape first, animal second,” Malcolm says. “Do it the other way round and you get something pretty that hurts to hold.”
Nine hundred cuts for one owl’s chest
This is the part that ended his career. The blade is no wider than a matchstick, and it has to be held at the same angle for hours. “Strength was never the thing,” Malcolm says. “It’s holding that angle all afternoon. That’s what’s gone.”
What makes a Hatherley stick different from a carved souvenir
- “The palm line.” The grip is shaped to the heel of the hand first. The animal is carved around it afterwards. “I’ve drawn round thousands of hands on brown paper,” Malcolm says. “Four shapes fit nearly everyone.”
- “The angled handle.” The handle sits at a slight angle, not flat across. The weight goes into the heel of the hand and the forearm, not the wrist.
- “The high balance.” The weight sits near the top, so the stick swings forward by itself. You don’t have to lift it on every step.
- “The one-piece run.” Handle and shaft are one piece of wood. There is no glued joint to work loose.
- “The hand-rubbed finish.” Oil rubbed in by hand over three days, not sprayed varnish. A damp hand grips it better, not worse.
- “The quiet tip.” A thick rubber tip on solid wood. No clicking down the corridor at the GP surgery.
“The most common mistake I see isn’t the wrong walking stick. It’s the stick that stays at home. If someone is happy to be seen with it, they use it. That matters more than anything else.”
Helen Brierley, physiotherapist, who has run a falls-prevention class in High Wycombe for eighteen years
Four animals for four different hands
Malcolm never carved from a catalogue. The four shapes left in his workshop are the four people kept asking for.
The Owl is for a weak or stiff grip. The feathered chest fills the whole palm. It is the one he made for hands that can no longer close all the way. As of last spring, that includes his own.
The Horse is for travelling. The mane makes a groove for the thumb, and the brass ring unscrews, so the stick comes apart for the car boot or the overhead locker.
The Elephant is for people who really lean on it. The curled trunk makes a hook for the fingers. Getting up out of a low armchair, that hook makes all the difference.
The Leopard is for longer walks. “This one goes to people who still walk two miles,” Malcolm says. “They just want something under the hand on the way home.”
Where his sticks end up
Malcolm still gets letters. A man in Kent who walks to his allotment again. A woman in Leeds who took the owl to her granddaughter’s wedding and made sure it was in the photographs. “Nobody ever writes to say how nice it looks on the wall,” Malcolm says. “They write to tell me where they went.”
The last piece of wood on the bench
Malcolm made stick number one for a man who would not leave his own house. He made number five thousand in 2017 and didn’t notice until his wife Maggie found it in the order book.
The test result that ended forty years
It isn’t his back and it isn’t his eyes. It is the joint at the base of each thumb, the one a carver leans on with every cut. Both hands now.
Years ago his GP had him squeeze a grip meter. Last March he did the same test again. The reading was less than a third of what it once was. The sawing still goes. The sanding still goes. Hours with a chisel in his hand do not.
“I can start a stick,” Malcolm says. “I just can’t finish one properly any more. And I won’t put my name on something that isn’t right.”
His son fits boilers in Reading. There is nobody to take over. What is left stands in racks along the back wall: 186 walking sticks. Owls, horses, elephants and leopards, all carved, oiled and finished. When they are gone, they are gone.
Why he priced them the way he did
Collectors pay a lot for a signed, hand-carved walking stick. Malcolm could have sold all 186 at that price within a month.
Instead he set the price just above what the wood and oil cost him. “A stick in a glass cabinet is a stick that failed,” he says. “I don’t want them on a wall. I want them on the pavement. On the church steps. In the queue at the Post Office on a Tuesday morning.”
What he wants is the thing he couldn’t give his father in 1986: someone standing at their own front door, looking down at what is in their hand, and going out anyway.
While stocks last: 186 walking sticks remain. Four designs, no restock.
£112.95 £67.95
Check availability → · Free UK delivery · 30-day returns
What people say about Malcolm’s walking sticks
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★★★★★
My mum had three walking sticks and used none of them. She has carried the owl every day since March, including to my daughter’s wedding. She told the photographer to make sure it was in the pictures.
Denise H. · Harrogate -
★★★★★
I bought the horse because it comes apart for the car. What sold me was the quiet. My old one clicked on every floor at the surgery and I hated hearing myself coming.
Graham W. · Shrewsbury -
★★★★★
The angle of the handle is not a small thing. With my old stick my wrist ached all evening after the walk to the shops. Same walk with the elephant and nothing. I felt the difference on day one.
Peter S. · Norwich
Questions people ask before ordering
Where can I buy one?
Only through this page. Malcolm never sold to shops, and there is nothing left to sell to them. You won’t find these on Amazon or on the high street.
How long will they be available?
Until the racks are empty. There are 186 across four designs, with no restock, because the workshop is closing. The Owl and the Horse have always gone first.
What if it doesn’t suit the person it was meant for?
You have thirty days to send it back for a full refund, no questions asked. One email is all it takes. A stick that sits in the hallway helps nobody.
Forty years of work, standing in four racks against a back wall. When the last one is posted, the workshop light goes off for good.
£112.95 £67.95
Limited quantity · 186 remaining
More from people who carry one
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★★★★★
Bought the leopard for my husband, who walks the dog two miles every morning and refused anything that looked medical. He has given it a name. That tells you how well it went.
Rosalind P. · Cheltenham -
★★★★★
You can feel the grain right through the finish. It’s not slippery at all, even on a warm day. It arrived in brown paper with the length written on the end in pencil.
Bernard Y. · Lancaster -
★★★★★
I’m eighty-two and I’d stopped going to church because of the steps. The elephant got me back up them. The vicar asked where I’d got it.
Margaret T. · Exeter