258 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Remarkable Trees 



Though there are many very fine walnuts scattered through the southern half of 

 England I cannot say where the largest tree actually is. Nothing that I know of 

 now living equals a tree recorded by Mr. W. Forbes,^ which grew on the estate of 

 Sir Charles Isham at Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire, and was sold to Messrs. 

 Westley Richards, gunmakers of Birmingham. According to the measurements 

 given, this tree contained 816 cubic feet of sound wood, of which the butt, measuring 

 12 feet by 18 feet in girth, contained 243 feet and one limb 108 feet. 



A magnificent tree, said to have been the largest in England, grew at Cothel- 

 stone, near Bishops Lydeard, Somersetshire, which Loudon records as being 64 feet 

 high and 6^ feet in diameter,- but I am informed by Mr. E. V. Trepplin, agent to 

 Viscount Portman, that it was blown down some years ago. 



No tree mentioned by Loudon equals the one of which I give a figure (Plate 

 74), which grows in front of the house at Harrington Park, near Burford, Oxford- 

 shire, the property of Mr. E. C. Wingfield, on an oolite formation. This tree 

 measured in 1903, 80 to 85 feet in height by 17 feet in girth, and has a fine bole 

 and a very burry trunk. There are two other splendid walnuts in this park nearly 

 as tall and over 1 5 feet in girth, and others have been cut down of which the timber, 

 when cut up in London, was considered by Mr. A. Howard equal in colour and figure 

 to Italian walnut. At the Moot, Downton, Wilts, the residence of my old friend Mr. 

 Elias P. Squarey, are four fine walnut trees, one of which was said by Mr. D. Watney 

 to be the largest he had seen during his long experience as a valuer, and estimated to 

 contain over 400 feet. It measures 17 feet 2 inches in girth, with a short butt divid- 

 ing into four big limbs which run up to about 80 feet in height. Another is the 

 tallest walnut I have ever seen or heard of, and measured in 1903 about 100 (perhaps 

 more) feet high by 13 feet in girth. 



In the village street of Bossington, Somersetshire, I was shown by Mr. S. F. 

 Luttrell of Dunster Castle, a very picturesque old gnarled walnut tree which at 5 feet 

 is 17 feet in girth, but the roots are so spreading that the trunk, measured close to 

 the ground and following the sinuosities, is 35 feet round. A walnut of apparently 

 no great age in a field at Cobham village in Kent measured in 1905 about 70 

 feet by 13 feet, and the branches spread over a circumference of 99 paces. 



An avenue of walnuts is seldom planted in England, but at Moor Court, Here- 

 fordshire, there is a short one which from an illustration in the Gardeners Chronicle 

 of February 6, 1875, seems very eff'ective. They are 60 to 70 feet high and 10 to 

 12 in girth. 



At Sudeley, Gloucestershire, the seat of Mr. H. Dent Brocklehurst, there are 

 in a line before the Castle four beautiful trees of great age, the largest measuring 

 90 feet by 14 feet, and in Rendcombe Park near the Temple there is a fine old tree 

 about 80 feet by 15 feet whose branches cover an area 105 paces in circumference. 



' Trans. Eni;. Arb. Soc. v. 155. 



2 In Tra„s Eng. Jrh. .So,:, ii. 225, measurements of this tree tnade in 18S8 by Dr. Prior are t;iven as follows :- 

 height, 94 feet 6 inches ; girth, iS feet ; spread, 22 yards by 27. 



