Fraxinus 873 



old heronry at Cobham Hall, Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley, a place 

 which contains taller and finer ash trees and hornbeams, and more of them, than any 

 that I have seen in England. Strange to say, Strutt, who figured several trees 

 at Cobham, overlooked these ; but in Francis Thynne's continuation of Holinshed's 

 Chronicles, p. 15 12, I find the following, which shows that Cobham was renowned 

 for its trees more than three centuries ago. Speaking of William, the last Lord 

 Cobham but one, he says : 



" Besides which, owerpassing his goodlie buildings at the Blackfriers in London, 

 in the year of Christ 1582, and since that the statelie augmenting of his house at 

 Cobham Hall, with the rare garden there ; in which no varietie of strange flowers and 

 trees do want, which praize or price maie obtaine from the farthest part of Europe, 

 or from other strange countries, whereby it is not inferior to the garden of Semiramis." 



The largest ash here, described by Loudon, was a tree 120 feet high, with 

 a trunk 6 feet 8 inches in diameter, straight, and without a branch for a great height. 

 This was perhaps the same whose trunk I saw in July 1905 lying on the ground, 

 where it had fallen several years ago. But those which remain are not only the 

 tallest ash trees, but the tallest trees of any sort with one exception that I have 

 measured in England, and there are so many of them that I can well believe that 

 I did not measure the tallest. The tallest tree, measured in April 1907, by Lord 

 Darnley, is 146 feet high by 12 feet in girth. Another growing by the side of a 

 drive, which he christened Queen Elizabeth's ash, I measured 143 feet high by 

 12 feet 7 inches in girth. In the grove near it are several, very nearly if not 

 quite, as tall, one of which I made 141 feet by 13 feet 1 inch, with a bole 50 feet 

 high, and a roughly estimated contents of 700 to 800 feet. (Plate 239.) Another, 

 140 feet by 12 feet 9 inches, with a bole of 48 feet, which, judging from the large 

 mass of fungus growing on its root, is probably decaying. There are many other 

 trees in this grove which are 125 to 130 feet high, and stand pretty close together, 

 growing in a sheltered situation, 1 on what appeared to be a deep but rather sandy 

 loam. 



Other remarkable ash trees at Cobham are the Twisted Ash, whose trunk is 

 spiral, and measures 116 feet by 17 feet 9 inches. (Plate 240.) The View Ash, 

 a tree nearer the house, is only about 80 feet high by 17 feet 9 inches at 5 feet, 

 but is 29 feet in girth at the base, and has its trunk and most of its branches 

 covered with green and healthy twigs. 



Next to Cobham in respect of its great ash trees is Knole Park, also in Kent, 

 where, in a sheltered valley near the gate from the Sevenoaks Road, called " The 

 Hole in the Wall," are a number of very fine sound trees, from 125 to 130 feet high 

 or more, and from 13^ to 16 feet in girth, one of which has a bole 35 feet long, and 

 probably contains over 700 feet of timber. Here again the soil is a deep sandy 

 loam, which grows splendid beech, oak, and chestnut, but I cannot guess the age of 

 the ash, though they are probably over 200 years. 



One of the most perfect examples, from a timber point of view, is a tree 

 growing in a wood called Poultridge, just outside Ashridge Park (Plate 241), which 



1 This is about 330 feet above sea-level, and is situated between the Medway and the Thames. 

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