Of Avenues
By J. D. U. WARD 0 NCE again there has been a sharp controversy about what should be done with the over-mature trees of a famous avenue. This time three avenues were in fact involved—all at Ham House, Richmond. Among several other avenues which have been in the headlines during the last twelve years are the Long Walk at Windsor (felled), the Broad Walk at Oxford, the linden avenue at Trinity College, Cambridge (felled), and the Grand Avenue, Savernake.
It is no mere accident that there should so often be sad news of avenues, nor is there any reason to suspect under- hand or underground work by some sinister society for the elimination of old trees. England's greatest avenue-planting age ran roughly from 1660 to 1740; the favourite trees for avenues (elm, beech, linden, hornbeam, horse-chestnut) are nearly always over-mature, even if they are tended with special care, before they are 300 years old and sometimes at 200. A few fine avenues suffered from the war and new aerodromes (for examples, Wimpole in Cambridgeshire and Herriard in Hampshire), and of course the Dutch elm disease has taken its toll; the most famous casualty was the Long Walk at Windsor—the double avenue of elms planted by Charles II and now replaced by alternate London planes and horse- chestnuts.
Very few of England's avenues were planted before 1660. An avenue of lindens at Buxted in Sussex may date from the time of Charles I; the older lines of the oak avenue at Buckle- bury in Berkshire are believed to have been planted to commemorate a visit of Queen Elizabeth I; and the very short avenue of yews leading to the church at Westbourne on the Sussex/Hampshire border is thought to have been planted by the Earl of Arundel in 1544—which (if true) would mean that it is almost certainly the oldest avenue in England.
Curiously little has been written about English avenues. A few years ago I devoted some days to research on the subject, in the Bodleian and elsewhere, but nowhere could I find two consecutive pages of print about avenues. The discovery of A. C. Forbes's English Estate Forestry (1904), with 61 pages on the subject, came later, and remains the greatest find yet, though it is little concerned with dates or history. More may well have been written in other languages, but they give no help to one who can read only English.
The world's oldest avenue of man-planted trees (here qualifi- cation is necessary because of stone avenues, as in China, in Egypt and at Stonehenge, and also because of " natural "•forest avenues) of which I have yet found mention is in Japan, at Koya-San. It is about a mile long, and is composed of Cryptomeria japonica—a handsome tree not uncommon in English gardens and conifer collections. The famous plant- collector E. H. Wilson wrote in 1916 that this avenue was planted by a priest about 650 years earlier—or roughly 150 years before Agincourt. Dr. Wilson and H. J. Elwes agreed that the 125-180-feet-tall trees of this avenue "surpassed in grandeur any other trees planted by man in the world." Even more famous is the prodigious Cryptomeria avenue at Nikko; it is twenty-four miles long, with more than 18,000 trees, but though it is no veteran, planted barely 350 years ago, this Nikko avenue is reported to have long gaps. .'t 3to be hoped that the Forestry Commission, whose officers are In Holland and some other European countries avenues by no means so blind to beauty as their enemies suggest, may were planted before 1500, but I do not know which avenues or exploit the opportunities. But the traditionalists must remember how many are acclaimed as the oldest in Europe. It is one point which has to be watched by would-be planters of a question which might be tackled with diplomatic caution;- roadside avenues elsewhere. The general character and speed many people are ready to boast of antiquities, but only a few .e.a...of traffic have changed. The road-traffic of our forbears, understand how short is the life of most trees. The Continent -1 fvhether Carolean or Victorian, moved at speeds ranging from can, however, show such things as would be impossible in; this three to twelve or fifteen miles an hour, and the danger of barbarous island—for example, long roadside avenues of fruit '.'skidding caused by wet leaves could be ignored. What the next trees. (Mr. Raymond Bush has noted that "a writer in 1828 hundred years may bring is anyone's guess, but much of our stated that in Moravia the road from Brunn to Chintz passed " present rubber-tyred traffic moves at forty miles an hour or through a cherry avenue extending to sixty miles.") even greater speeds, and the hazards of skidding are real. On the Continent there are avenues of tulip-trees such as are extremely rare or non-existent in England, and the qualities of the London plane have perhaps been better appreciated than in this country, where the hybrid had its origin. Other trees comparatively seldonr used for avenues in England include ash, sycamore and Cobbett's old favourite, the robinia, or so-called locust tree. I cannot recall having seen good avenues of the first or last, but have been informed of interesting sycamore avenues at Bolton Hall in Yorkshire. A short avenue of mulberry-trees at Froomore. is believed to be the only one of its kind in the United Kingdom, but there is a young mulberry avenue on the island of Lambay, no great distance from Dublin. Avenues of oaks are much scarcer than might be expected, but our indigenous oaks are rather slow-growing and difficult to manage—which may explain why they were not chosen by avenue-planters. Both the faster-growing Turkey oak, which makes poor timber, and the handsome American red oak have possibilities as avenue trees.
The word " avenue " is vague, in that it now covers such widely different conceits as a mere alley in a garden, a short approach to a church, the miles-long frame of a vista through a park and into the blue, roadside-planting in town or country and a deliberately grand and formal mall. The last is perhaps the oldest and most proper use of the word, especially if account be taken of " avenue's " derivation (and compare "explore every avenue "), but there is room for equivocation and honest misunderstanding when disputes arise about the treatment of avenues.
The most common source of trouble (after the already- mentioned popular failure to understand that it is the nature of trees to die) is ignorance about the aims and objects of avenue-planters. Most of our older avenues are formal con- ceptions, and their satisfactory effect depends on continuity and uniformity. When individual deaths cause irregular gaps (and other trees will almost certainly have become dangerous at the same time), the effect is spoilt. Today this is not appreciated because taste has moved against formality—as it did in the time of Capability Brown. Then scores of good avenues were razed. But now there has developed, indepen- dently, a lush sentimentality about old trees. Hence protests against clear-felling even the most decrepit old avenues and demands for patching. Yet patching produces a patchy effect; only the shabby ghost of grandeur is left to an obviously patched avenue, and the pathos of a prolonged living death may be all too evident.
The blow caused by the loss of an ancient avenue might sometimes be softened if proper attention were given to the matter several years in advance. It might be feasible, for example, to plant a successor avenue of . shade-tolerant trees which could make some growth before the old avenue was felled. But there would of course be difficulties; the problem of arranging succession for avenue-trees appears to have received little attention. Here and there avenues which must otherwise have been doomed have been reprieved by drastic topping or polling. An interesting example is the elm avenue (sometimes said to be over 400 years old) leading from the green to the grammar-school at Witney, in Oxfordshire. Happily for the future, a compromise between the unfashionable formality of the Restoration age and the " natural " effects which are commonly preferred today is developing accidentally—in some of the post-1919 forests. Here are the matrices of magnificent roadside avenues. It is
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