Returning to the great pollard of Mowden Hall, fifty years on
We used to climb this tree. At least I did. Often enough. Small enough and agile enough. I always feel there were at least three boys in the tree at any one time.
It stands on the northern side of the mile long drive as Mowden Hall comes into view, more clearly than in the 1970s set in a landscape garden of mature beech and redwood.
It was a place of pilgrimage. A meeting point. A proving ground.
Now, fifty years later, I come back.
It’s still there — vast and patient, and familiar. As a Woodland Trust volunteer tree surveyor I’ve measured and studied hundreds of beech trees; only a few have a growth of over 5m.
Its base is enormous, gnarled and fluted. A quick inspection suggests it is a healthy, mature tree with few indicators of ‘veteran’ characteristics such as moss, lichen, heart rot fungi or hollowing.
A climbing frame for boys, like bouldering or any challenging climbing wall. I hazard a guess that a chair had made its way out of a common room and was used to help us into this tree’s branches.
I carved my initials there, somewhere deep inside the bole. JV. The bark was smooth and pale — beech bark always is — and it took the blade easily. It never struck my mind as an act of vandalism; it was more a rite of passage. We all carved our names in here; at least I thought we did. A quick glance and I pick out a date and name. Stott 1969, or 1963? I’m not about to climb into the bole which 50 years ago was clear of any epicormic new growth which now packs the tree. Did us boys suppress this growth over 30 or more years, wanting to keep this space like a watch tower.
The pollard must be over 250 years old. It would have been planted when Newton Hall was part of the Georgian landscaping that shaped the estate: beech, yew, redwood. Formal groves, an observatory, a lake, drives, views and lodges – and the practicalities of having a regenerating source of wood. This beech was once cut for timber, its stems harvested at shoulder height from pollard, until the pollarding ceased and it was left to grow perhaps 200 years ago. Each stem has the thickness and weight of a trunk giving the tree an unbalanced, top heavy form.
It is now a veteran tree by every measure — eligible for the Ancient Tree Inventory, a true specimen of ecological and cultural value. It shelters bats, beetles, and fungi. It also shelters memories of hundreds of prep: school boys from the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
We were just boys, scrambling over roots, shouting through the canopy, taking dares and carving names. We never thought of ourselves as part of the tree’s story. But we are. I was. And today I returned to honour that and rekindle memories of den building and den raids, of climbing trees, challenges and rites of passage.
I should seek permission to climb the tree and photograph the names carved there. It may require scaffolding, a harness and rope or just a cherry picker. These days ‘free climbing’ of trees requires a risk assessment and paperwork; fifty years ago we saw a tree and faced a challenge: had it been climbed, how high has anyone been, can I go higher, is there a way out of this tree into the branches of another?
This is what the rows of old yew trees offered; long limbs that would, with our light weight, offer us into the branches of the next tree. Coming down was a controlled fall, as you could grab each next level of branches during your descent.
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