1 8 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Beech Avenues 



Sir Hugh Beevor has sent me a photograph of a remarkable avenue of beech 

 trees called Finch's Avenue, near Watford, which is composed of straight, clean, 

 closely planted trees up to 120 feet high (Plate 2). 



As an avenue tree the beech is one of the most stately and imposing that we 

 have ; but probably because of the difficulty of getting tall, straight standards from 

 nurseries, and their tendency to branch too near the ground when planted thinly, 

 they are not so much in vogue as they were two centuries ago. One of the finest 

 examples I know of in England is the grand avenue in Savernake Forest, the 

 property of the Marquess of Ailesbury. This was planted in 1723, and extends for 

 nearly 5 miles from Savernake House to the hill above Marlborough. It is 

 described and figured in the Transactions of the English Arboricultural Society, v. 

 p. 405, and though the trees are not individually of quite such fine growth as those 

 at Ashridge, yet, forming a continuous green aisle meeting overhead, for such an 

 immense distance, it is even more beautiful than the elm avenue at Windsor, or the 

 lime avenue at Burghley, and surpasses both of them in length. The Savernake 

 avenue, however, is not like those above mentioned, planted at regular distances, but 

 ^-seems to have been cut out of a belt. 



The beech avenue at Cornbury Park, the property of Vernon Watney, Esq., to 

 whom I am indebted for the following particulars, is, on account of the great size of the 

 trees, one of the most imposing in England. It was probably planted or designed by 

 John Evelyn, whose diary, 1 7th October, 1664, says : " I went with Lord Visct. Cornbury 

 to Cornbury in Oxfordshire, to assist him in the planting of the park, and beare him 

 company, dined at Uxbridge, lay at Wicckam (Wycombe)." They reached Cornbury 

 the following day, and among the entries for that day is the following : " We 

 designed an handsom chapell that was yet wanting as Mr. May had the stables, 

 which indeed are very faire having set out the walkes in the park and gardens." 

 This Lord Cornbury who, after his father's death, became Lord Clarendon, records in 

 his diary, " 1689, September 25. Wednesday. The elms in the park were begun to 

 be pruned." This avenue is 800 yards long, and runs from the valley where the 

 great beech grew, up the hill to the house. Many of the trees seem to have been 

 pollarded when young at about 15 feet high, but have shot up immense straight 

 limbs to a height of 100 to no feet, some even taller. 



The Ten Rides in Cirencester Park affords a good illustration of the value 

 of the beech for bordering the broad rides through a great mass of woodland ; but 

 the trees here, as at Cornbury and in so many of our old parks, have seen their 

 best days, and when blanks are made by wind or decay, it is beyond the power 

 of man to restore the regular appearance of such a vista. 



Whatever pains may be taken to replant the gaps, the trees never seem to run 

 up as they do when all planted together, and the art of planting avenues does not 

 seem to be so well understood or so much practised now, as it was in the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries. 



