53^ The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Remarkable Trees 



Large hornbeams are not at all common, and exist so far as I have seen in 

 comparatively few places, mostly old parks. The largest and finest that I know of, 

 though by no means the tallest, is near the reservoir at Cornbury Park, Oxford, 

 where there is a tree whose height I could not measure exactly, though it probably 

 exceeds 75 feet, with a bole 11 feet 10 inches in girth and 12 to 14 feet long, which 

 spreads out at that height into an immense number of branches covering a circle of 

 95 paces (Plate 148). There are two other trees of nearly similar size and habit on 

 the north side of the beech avenue, one of them leaning very much on one side with 

 drooping branches. Sir Hugh Beevor has recently measured a tree, 100 feet in 

 height and 9 feet 8 inches in girth, on Sir Robert Dashwood's property near West 

 Wycombe. 



But there is no place where I have seen hornbeams so tall or so numerous as at 

 Cobham Park, Kent, where there must be hundreds of trees 70 to 80 feet high, and 

 many with clean boles 20 to 40 feet long. Among so many it is hard to say which 

 are the largest, but one which I measured near the old heronry, and not far from the 

 ash grove, was over 90 feet high, dividing at about 7 feet into four stems, each of 

 which ran up straight and clean for about 40 feet. Another, a pollard, hollow on one 

 side, measured 13 feet 6 inches in girth. These grow on a soil which suits the ash 

 perfectly. Four shoots from a stool in a wood here measured 76 feet high and 2 to 

 3 feet in girth. 



At Mersham-le- Hatch, Ashford, Kent, the seat of Sir Wyndham Knatchbull, 

 BarL, I saw, in 1907, a remarkable wood called Bockhanger, composed of very old 

 pollard hornbeams many of which are hollow and much decayed. They grow on a 

 sandy loam, covered in spring with bluebells, and have for generations served to 

 supply the mansion with firewood, of which the steward told me twelve to fourteen 

 cords were annually consumed. The largest of these trees was about 16 feet to the 

 crown, and had a very large kidney-shaped wen on one side, over which it measured 

 16 feet 4 inches in girth. Another tree here showed the remarkable power of the 

 hornbeam in repairing wounds in its trunk. A large double-stemmed tree, widely 

 split and hollow at the base, had higher up completely covered the open cleft with 

 young healthy wood and bark in the same way that old yews often do. 



A most remarkable hornbeam, on account of its very wide-spreading branches, 

 grows in Fredville Park, Kent, and though not over 35 to 40 feet high, covers an 

 area of no less than 103 paces round. It has about fifteen main branches which 

 show the characteristic irregularities that old hornbeams always have. The branches 

 are so thick that foxes often choose the crown of this tree as a lair, and when 

 covered with fruit, as it was when I saw it in June 1907, it is a most striking 

 and beautiful tree. It grows in a deep fertile loam overlying chalk, but rather wet 

 in winter. 



The hornbeam is, in Essex, especially in Epping Forest, most commonly seen 

 as a pollard, the practice of lopping the branches for firewood having been very 

 general in old times. A photograph showing the appearance of the tree when so 



