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Of the extraordinary size to which oaks have attained in this district we have a record which is without parallel in this or any country. My attention was called to it by the Earl of Powis, who, knowing the locality, believes it to be true. It is taken from a work called Collections Relating to Montgomeryshire, xiii. 424-425 (1880), published by the Powysland Club at Welshpool, and runs as follows:—
"In 1793 and 1796 a large fall of oak timber took place at Vaynor park in the parish of Berriew, when some trees of enormous dimensions were cut down. Major Corbett Winder has kindly favoured us with a copy of the following memorandum of the particulars of the contents of some of the largest trees:—
'Dimensions of twenty-six of the largest oaks cut down in Vaynor Park in 1793 and 1796.
The counties of Hereford, Worcester, Shropshire, and Stafford have produced and perhaps still contain the largest oaks in England, next to those I have just mentioned, but the long years of agricultural depression which have impoverished so many of the squires of England, have caused the felling of many of the finest. Among these the most celebrated was the Hereford Monarch which grew at Tyberton, near the house of Chandos Lee Warner, Esq., to whom I am indebted for two copies of a print taken from drawings which were made by G.L. Lewis, and published in a scarce work called Portraits of British Forest Trees.[3] One of
