IT has to be one of Dorset’s best-kept secrets. In fact a mention of the place often prompts a puzzled look or a shrug.

Nevertheless, between Sherborne and Sturminster Newton lies a slice of English heritage, the Stock Gaylard Estate.

Set in about 1,800 acres, the estate boasts a deer park, a parish church and a listed Georgian mansion and is peppered with ancient oak trees, which are the main focus of this Saturday’s Stock Gaylard Oak Fair.

From furniture and food to arts and crafts, the rural event, which is now in its fifth year, is a celebration of the local talent to be found within the surrounding countryside.

At last year’s fair, Great Britain’s first lumberjack display team, Adam’s Axemen, took just over an hour to fell one of the estate’s dead oak trees.

The team, who were established in the New Forest, helped chop up the 159-year-old tree and the pieces were distributed to local artists, furniture makers and other craftspeople, who have spent the last 12 months creating something special out of the wood. The results are impressive.

Some of the bigger chunks of oak have been transformed into beautiful pieces of furniture.

“I was essentially using what was left over,” is the modest claim from Jamie Ross, a worker at the estate who has crafted a gorgeous bed.

He also made a new gate for Stock Gaylard’s parish church, which will sit just metres away from where the tree was felled. “These are low-impact products – not only are they local but the tree was already dead.”

Equally impressive is the garden bench created by Dominic Ellis, a gardener from Fifehead Neville, Sturminster Newton.

“I’m glad to have my garage back,” says Dominic’s father, Jon, who is also exhibiting his handiwork.

However, unlike his son, Jon has gone for form over function, crafting two sculptures out of his piece of oak.

“I did something that I don’t normally do – I let a piece of material dictate the idea,” he explains, as we admire his work.

One of the quirkier craftsmen at the fair is Bill Moore, of the Mary Rose Trust.

The Sturminster Newton resident has created historical replicas of artefacts found on the Mary Rose ship, including a fantastic backgammon board and a linstock, a decorative stick that was used to hold the slow matches which lit the fuses on the cannons.

Other impressive exhibits include David Saltmarsh’s armchair, a beautiful set of bowls crafted from knotty wood by Jeremy Freeman and an owl box made for Stock Gaylard’s barn owls by Andrew Langmead.

“We have a healthy barn owl population here,” says Andrew, whose wife Josie inherited the estate from her grandfather, Colonel Yeatman. “So I made the box for them.”

The local bat population has also benefited from the felling of the oak as some of the offcuts have been used to make bat boxes.

Nothing has gone to waste. Even the sawdust is being used to smoke mackerel in one of the estate’s food smokers.

“I am a great believer in everything being utilised as close to the source as possible,” says Andrew, who planted an oak tree to replace the old one.

“I’m delighted this has all come together so well. People have really entered into the spirit of it.”

Last year more than 5,000 visitors flocked to the estate for the fair.

“When you live in a great place like this you have got to share it,” says Andrew.