earlier, £40,000 was offered for about forty acres of oak timber on this property; and an old man at Nettlecombe said that the tools were actually brought to the place ready to fell them, when the owner changed his mind and they were allowed to stand. A considerable part of these oaks have been since felled, but a magnificent grove still remains on the slopes of a combe, at an elevation of five to six hundred feet on the south-west side of Nettlecombe Park, facing to the north and east, and on a soil locally called "shiletty," which is a reddish rocky formation, overlaid by a thin layer of rubbly stone, probably old red sandstone, which would appear too thin and dry to produce big oak timber. The age of these trees, so far as I could judge by counting the rings of one which had been blown down, is not more than 200 to 250 years, but some may possibly be much older.[1] The majority are very clean and free from limbs to from 40 to 60 feet up, and average 10 to 12 feet in girth. One, about 210 years old and over 100 feet long, was 3 feet in diameter at the butt, and had fifty annual rings in a radius of 9 inches near the heart, but outside of this the growth had been much slower. I had not time to measure them carefully, or estimate the number now standing on an acre; but two of the finest trees on the steep banks of the combe were 116 by 14 feet, with a bole 65 feet long; another was 116 by 16 feet, with a bole of 50 feet by 36 inches quartergirth. The thickest trees, which I did not measure, are on the outside of the grove. Assuming the price of £1000 per acre to have been based on 4s. per foot for the butts, which for trees of this size and character would, sixty years ago, have been about the value, and the trees to have averaged 200 cubic feet, there would have been perhaps forty trees to the acre, averaging £25 each, and though the cubic contents do not come up to what we are told is produced in some of the picked areas of oak forest in France and Germany, I have never heard of an actual sale of any timber in England at so high a price.
At Hazlegrove, Somersetshire, the property of the Rev. A. St. John Mildmay, is a remarkably fine oak, reported to be the largest in the county. It is about 75 feet high by 29 feet 9 inches at 5 feet from the ground, and at ground level spreads out to no less than about 18 yards in circumference. Though it seems sound, yet it has arent on the north-east side, as though struck by lightning, and many of the largest limbs have been broken by wind, and are mended with lead. A drawing of it, made in 1833 when it seems to have been in full vigour, is in Hazlegrove House.
In Melbury Park, Dorsetshire, the seat of the Earl of Ilchester, there is an extraordinary oak, known as Billy Wilkin's Oak (Plate 88), which swells into an immense burry trunk, 38 feet in girth at the ground, and 35 feet at 5 feet up. Above this it falls away a good deal, and is only about 50 feet high. Like all the trees I have seen of this type, of which perhaps it is the largest in England, it is of the pedunculate variety, and bears acorns abundantly.
At Longleat, Wilts, which has a most beautifully timbered park, and is one of the finest places in England, there is an extremely fine tall oak growing in the
- ↑ The Rev. Mr. Hancock, who is a connection of the Trevelyans of Nettlecombe, says that he has always heard that they were planted about 1600, when part of the existing house was built.
