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,[1] 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 Cothelstone, near Bishops Lydeard, Somersetshire, which Loudon records as being 64 feet high and 6½ feet in diameter,[2] 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 Barrington Park, near Burford, Oxfordshire, 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 15 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 dividing 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, Herefordshire, there is a short one which from an illustration in the Gardeners' Chronicle of February 6, 1875, seems very effective. 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.
