Heritage walks have proven popular as tall trees tell tales
The Heritage Walks run by the Horsham Society have got off to a good start and have proven popular on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons.
Horsham’s past is told not only by the volunteer guides but also by the many ancient fine trees to be found throughout our town. From the Forum you will see a fabulous weeping beech and mature oaks, testimony to the former gardens of Hewell’s Manor, built in the Causeway in 1709 by Nathaniel Tredcroft. The trees in Horsham Park were the adornments of Park House and tell of the wealth of the owners of these mansions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Other trees give us a different story, being the livand ing traces of our recent agricultural past. Sussex progressed from a heavily forested area – ‘Weald’ derives from the German root ‘wald’ meaning forest – to agriculture, to built-up suburbia. Many of our roads follow old field boundaries and the trees are still standing. Try, as an example, walking along Comptons Lane counting the mature oaks. There are at least forty of them another six down Comptons Brow Rise.
Their age can be estimated by measuring the girth at about oneand-a-half metres off the ground. Oaks grow at roughly 2.5cm per year so a tree is 40 years old for every metre in girth. The ones in Comptons Lane are at least 100 years old, perhaps older, providing shelter and nourishment for innumerable wildlife. Some beech trees match them in age. Several show clear signs of having been pollarded, perhaps before the First World War, with multiple trunks since grown to full height from the single main stem. Their unnatural weight distribution can make them unstable but as they’ve survived the storms of the last hundred years, we can expect them to hold out a while longer.
A magnificent ash stands proud by the roadside and gives rise to real anxiety of loss because of ash dieback, a fatal disease caused by airborne fungus. You may well have noticed the number of trees recently cut down by our main highways e.g. along the A281, as dead trees are a traffic hazard. Some more resistant strains are now possible and hopefully the tide of disease can be halted. Recall the appalling loss of 25million elms in the 1960s and 1970s, a loss now slowly repaired with new varieties. Some of these have been planted at Parham to honour the Jubilee as part of the Queen’s Green Canopy campaign. The trees of this campaign will tell tall tales when mature of the longest reign of a British monarch.
We too can honour the monarchical oaks in our midst by recording them and help preserve them for generations to come. To record a tree, go to ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk for full instructions.
See www.horshamsociety.org for more information