Big beech tree.

The only sensible explanation I have come up with is supported by this view of the trunk on the north side. It might just be that our beech is in fact two trees that have grown into one, seeded or planted some time since the RAF survey. Short of cutting the tree down or getting core samples taken there seems no definite way of proving this. I shall ask our tree man Matt Duston for his opinion next time we call on him to lop one of our roadside trees.

Magnificent specimen even if it does drop more than a few leaves from August on. But I have measured its girth at 1.4 metres above ground level and it is 3.02 metres around. There seem to be slightly different methods of calculating the age of a tree from this information, type of tree, immediate environment and so on. But whichever method you use, the age comes in at between 115 and 130 years. So we have assumed it is well over a hundred years old. Until now. Devon County Council has a very interesting website which is still having new data added, but basically it is old maps of the county mostly from the Ordnance Survey, plus the recent overhead camera shots as displayed on Google Earth and the like. One additional file added recently is the RAF aerial survey undertaken between 1946 and 1949, and we have located Higher Morwell on that, which has the house with no barn extension and one very large cultivated patch. It is taken in summer as all the trees are in full leaf. But… there is no beech tree in the garden and that was about 70 years ago.