475 
Henry II. to Flexley Abbey, of the tithe of all his Chesnuts in the forest of Dean. The honourable 
Daines Barrington on the contrary (Philos. Trans. Vol. LXI.) thinks that it is not a native. It cer¬ 
tainly is notin the woods north of Trent, and though it has been long in the southern parts, yet 
there is no appearance of its being indigenous.* 
This tree seems to be very long lived, and grows to a very great size. The famous Castagno de 
Cento Cavalli on Mount Etna, as measured by Mr. Brydone in 17 / 0 , is two hundred and forty feet 
in circumference; some, however, have doubted whether this be really one tree. Brydone says, it 
had the appearance of five distinct trees, but that he was assured the space was once filled with solid 
timber, and that there was no bark on the inside. Kircher, about a century before Brydone, affirms 
that an entire flock of sheep might be commodiously inclosed within it, as in a fold. II Castagno 
del Galea, of which there is no doubt, measured then seventy-six feet round, at two feet from the 
ground. But these trees grow on a deep rich soil, formed from the ashes of the volcano. 
There are some fine Chesnuts on the banks of the river Tamur in Cornwall, at an old house 
belonging to the Edgecumbe family: and at Beech worth castle in Surry, there are not fewer than 
seventy or eighty trees measuring from twelve to eighteen or twenty feet in girt. 
At Winley near Hitchin Priory in Hertfordshire, a Chesnut in 1789 girted somewhat more than 
fourteen yards at five feet above the ground; its trunk was hollow, and in parts open, but its vege¬ 
tation was vigorous.f 
In the park adjoining to the garden at Great Canford in Dorsetshire are four large Chesnut trees, 
one of them measuring thirty-seven feet round, still bearing fruit plentifully, though much shivered 
and decayed by age.J 
There was an old decayed tree at Fraiting in Essex, whose very stump yielded thirty sizeable loads 
of logs. And another in Gloucestershire containing within its bowels a pretty wainscotted room, 
enlightened with windows, and furnished with seats, &c.§ Ben Jonson, in his poem on PenshursL 
makes mention of a Chesnut planted at the birth of Sir Philip Sidney. 
In Ireland there are or have been many fine Chesnuts; as an avenue at Dunganstown, the estate 
of William Floey, Esq. cut down in 1793 ; one of these measured fourteen feet three inches, another 
fifteen feet, and a third sixteen feet six inches round; the length of one was twenty-four feet, and 
another thirty-six. 
The most remarkable of these trees in England is that at Tortworth, the seat of Lord Ducie in 
Gloucestershire. Even in the year 1150, says Bradley, it was stiled the great or old Chesnut tree of 
Tortworth; it fixes the boundary of the manor, and is probably a thousand years old at least. It 
girted fifty-one feet at six feet above the ground, about the year 1720 : it divided at the crown into 
three limbs, one of which then measured twenty-eight feet and a half in girt, five feet above the 
crown. The soil in which the tree grows is a soft clay somewhat loamy, and the situation on the 
N. W. side of a hill. || 
Lord Ducie has a beautiful painting of this ancient tree. I have, says Professor Martyn, by the 
favour of his Lordship, an etching of it, made in the year 1772 , under which is this inscription: “ The 
east view of the ancient Chesnut tree at Tortworth, in the county of Gloucester, which measures 
nineteen yards in circumference, and is mentioned by Sir Robert Atkyns in his history of that county, 
as a famous tree in King John’s time, and by Mr. Evelyn in his Sylva, to have been so remarkable 
for its magnitude, in the reign of King Stephen, as then to be called the great Chesnut of Tortworth, 
* Evelyn’s Silva. f Gilpin’s For. Seen. 1. 59 . & 141. 
J Grose’s Antiquities, Suppl. Yol. I. § M. S. Ord. 
|| Philos. Account, p. 176 ; also Gent. Mag. for 1766 , p. 321, where is a figure of it 
