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, 17th 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 110 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.
