there are some large trees, more remarkable for girth than for height, one being 24% feet round at two feet from the ground.
At Rostrevor House, Co. Down, the seat of Colonel Sir J. Ross of Bladensburg, a chestnut, about 25 feet high, is remarkable for the large size and colour of the young leaves, which were purplish when I saw them in July, and are said to turn copper colour in autumn. This variety is of unknown origin, and I have seen nothing like it at Kew or elsewhere.
Timber, Miscellaneous Products
A great deal has been written as to the use of chestnut wood for the beams and roofs of ancient buildings, both in England’ and France, but it is now pretty generally admitted that most of the supposed chestnut wood is really that of the oak, which it slightly resembles.? This subject has been so well discussed by Loudon (pp. 1787, 1989, and 1992) that I need not further allude to it; but the properties and uses of the wood were apparently much better known formerly than now, and Mr. N. Kent, in 1792, wrote an excellent paper on the subject from which Loudon quotes largely (p. 1993). The pith of it all agrees with what I have been able to learn from various practical men—that the wood when young is as good or better than oak (because it has much less sapwood) for fencing, gate-posts, piles, and hop-poles ; but that if allowed to become more than 3 to 4 feet in girth it is so apt to be shaky, that its value rapidly diminishes, and very old trees are usually only fit for firewood.
The timber in some cases remains quite sound to a great age and becomes mottled and streaked with dark brown like brown oak. I found the butt of an old tree of this nature, in a small timber yard in Wilts, where it had been lying seventeen years without any use being found for it. I had it cut into boards, from which the stiles and rails of an overmantel, and the frames of some doors have been made ; and these, when polished with oil, were both in grain and colour of remarkable beauty. But even after this long period the wood was not dry, and shrank con- siderably after it was cut up, so that care must be taken not to put such wood together in a hurry.
Mr. T. Roberts, forester to the Earl of Egmont, at Cowdray, informs me that chestnut is used on that estate for joists, window-sills, door-jambs, and other purposes, and is found to last quite as long as oak and to be much easier to work up; he also thinks it less liable to insect attacks than oak (presumably sappy oak). But the trees when a hundred years old are all more or less inclined to be shaky,
1 Sir George Birdwood in Reports on the Cultivation of the Spanish Chestnut, p. 9, note (India Office, 12th March 1892),
states that the late Mr. T. Blashill, who was architect to the London County Council, pointed out in a letter to the Zzmes,
that the only instance he knew of chestnut wood in English mediæval carpentry is that of the chancel screen of the church,
formerly of the Knights of St. John, at Rodmersham in Kent, The Rev. A. H. J. Massey, Vicar of Rodmersham, tells me,
however, that the chancel screen is a modern one of oak, with portions of an ancient screen of chestnut wood worked into it;
but the screen separating the Lady Chapel from the chancel, is composed entirely of chestnut wood.
7 Mr. Blashill, in Sessional Pagers of the Royal Institute of Architects, No, 12 (1877-78), has finally settled any lingering doubts which may exist. On the question of oak or chestnut in old timber roofs, he says that in some specimens of English oak, Particularly in the variety called sessiliflora, the medullary plates are very thin and wide apart, and such specimens are often mistaken for chestnut, but a very clean transverse section will always render the plates visible. Though usually lighter than the rest of the wood, they are often dark, and such specimens have also been mistaken for chestnut. He goes on to say that the clean grain and pleasant working of chestnut make it very suitable for joinery, and there is no fear of its durability
