Forests of Imagination

Book Recommendations

Meeting With Remarkable Trees
Thomas Pakenham

ISBN 1841880868 Cassell paperbacks

A beautifully illustrated book of 60 trees that the author has chosen as being remarkable in some way. As Thomas Pakenham says “ To visit these trees is to stop beneath their domes and vaults, is to pay homage at a mysterious shrine. But tread lightly; Even these giants have delicate roots. And be warned that this may be your farewell visit. Noone can say if this prodigious trunk will survive the next Atlantic storm or outlive us all by centuries.”

In his chapter on sacred trees there are several Yew trees. There is a photograph of a huge Yew at Much Marcle, in a churchyard, where so many Yews are found. It has a hollow trunk in which there is a wooden bench. I like this idea, the parishioners stopping on their way to or from a church service and chatting inside this venerable Yew. Without probably knowing that this tree is likely to be a witness from pre- Christian times or been a part of an earlier religious site.

Thomas Pakenham also describes the Kett Oak, that he photographed in 1994 in Wymondham. It was under this tree, then in a common, that Robert Kett lead an uprising against the crown, demanding the ending of the enclosure of common land. Kett gathered 20,000 people on his way to Norwich, and captured the castle there. But King Edward V1 sent the Earl of Warwick to crush this peasant army, and Kett was tried for treason, condemned and hung at Norwich castle. This Oak stood as a symbol for radicals for many years, with many making pilgrimages to see it. Now it stands by a busy road, mostly forgotten.

It reminds us that trees have often been the sites of historically important gatherings. Still today people seem to naturally gravitate towards the trees in their surroundings, to sit under their shade, or shelter from the rain.

One of the images I like in the book is that of the Sweet Chestnut tree in Tortworh Gloustershire, said to have marked a boundary in the 12th century. There is a lovely engraving of the tree with a stag, produced in 1712. Then there is a photograph taken by Thomas Pakenham, he says “ someone has fenced off the tree to protect it from cattle. This has allowed new trunks and new branches to burst out in all directions. The old trunk is now 36ft in girth, more like a waterfall than a tree; huge, half rotten yet bursting with new life- including some surplus nuts that I have planted in my garden.”

I love the wildness of that tree in the photograph, that abundance of growth that he talks about, and the continuity of interest and desire to record the tree in some way that includes the old engraving.