Common Oak 



309 



Of the extraordinary size to which oaks have attained in this district we have a 

 record which is without parallel in this or any country. My attention was called to 

 it by the Earl of Powis, who, knowing the locality, believes it to be true. It is taken 

 from a work called Collections Relating to Montgomeryshire, xiii. 424-425 (1880), 

 published by the Powysland Club at Welshpool, and runs as follows : 



"In 1793 and 1796 a large fall of oak timber took place at Vaynor park in the 

 parish of Berriew, when some trees of enormous dimensions were cut down. Major 

 Corbett Winder has kindly favoured us with a copy of the following memorandum 

 of the particulars of the contents of some of the largest trees : 



" Dimensions of twenty- six of the largest oaks cut down in Vaynor Park in 

 1793 and 1796. 



Total : 37,772 cubic feet, averaging 1452^ cubic feet per tree" 



The counties of Hereford, Worcester, Shropshire, and Stafford have produced 

 and perhaps still contain the largest oaks in England, next to those I have just 

 mentioned, but the long years of agricultural depression which have impoverished so 

 many of the squires of England, have caused the felling of many of the finest. 

 Among these the most celebrated was the Hereford Monarch which grew at 

 Tyberton, near the house of Chandos Lee Warner, Esq., to whom I am indebted for 

 two copies of a print taken from drawings which were made by G. L. Lewis, and 

 published in a scarce work called Portraits of British Forest Trees? One of 



' The photographs from which these plates are reproduced were taken in June 1904 by Mr. R. G. Tester of Uurford. 

 ' This plate is from a photograph taken in 1906 by Lord Powis. ' Vale, Hereford, 1837. 



