Pollard tree

I have been out to Richmond/Campania(Tasmania) to buy some apricots. It was a beautiful warm, still day, trees dripping with fruit, vines beginning to develop pinpricks of grapes, buildings releasing their history as they fall to ruins, others standing stout and strong, not willing to give in to time. Ephraim and his Irish wife Bridget were married here in 1850.
 Fifteen years earlier, the temperatures would have been different back in Suffolk. December brings cold and a fire brings warmth. Ephraim gathered some wood from a pollard tree and won himself 6 weeks in gaol. No central heating there either, you can bet.
When I was small, Dad used to feed the chickens pollard which was like" puree of pellets." It was not the sort of glam dish you would see on a menu but it turned those cute little yellow furballs into blotchy teenagers with spiky white feathers sticking out at odd angles till they grew smooth and white all over. It seems that a pollard tree was also for food for animals. You trimmed it back to keep it at head height and fed the branches to animals or used them as firewood.
Is it called a pollard because you half cut the branch off then pull 'ard to get the rest of it free?