Williamson's Weekly Notes - Oct 7 2009

This must be the biggest sweet chestnut in the county. I suppose the tree must be 40 feet in circumference.

There are some big chestnuts also at Barlavington near Burton Mill Pond, more along The Race which leads into Midhurst on Cowdray while at Goodwood's Redvins Wood near the Devil's Ditch trees of more than 20 feet are gradually dying off. There is also a great hulk in West Ashling woods.

The Romans brought this mighty tree in from Italy. In that country it grows to even bigger size.

There is a famous tree at the foot of Mount Etna called the Castagne de Cento Cavilla which had a girth of 204 feet in 1845.

The biggest in Britain seems to be that in Gloucestershire at Tortworth which was 44 feet around in 1791, 57 feet in 1845. It is still alive now but resembles an old battleship with much dead timber strewn around it that forms a sort of cave.

A plaque was placed next to this tree in 1800 proclaiming it to be 600 years old and read: "May Man still Guard thy Venerable form From the Rude Blasts and Tempestuous Storm. Still mayest thou Flourish through Succeeding time, and Last, long last, the Wonder of the Clime".

There are still many hundreds if not thousands of acres of sweet chestnut coppice throughout Sussex too. Of course this used to be vital to our rural industry until a short time ago but now a lot of it is going into decline.

I believe the coppice you see alongside the road from Midhurst to Fernhurst is used for chip-board, while farms still use sweet chestnut for fencing posts.

It does not need chemical protection unlike pine, and will outlast oak though not yew. In my youth I used to make fence posts by felling and splitting the poles and could make 100 in a day if everything went well.

Our ancestors would use the wood for anything on the farm. Chestnut paling was a favourite and still is here and there, beer barrels, thatching pegs, hop poles, wagon shafts, scoops for measuring corn or meal, windmill sails, corn drum chassis and winnowing machine pieces were used instead of oak.

Chestnut was also used in churches for eagle lecterns and pews before the use of pine. Carvings of Green Men were often in chestnut.

Church beams might be of chestnut though you had to be mighty careful not to use a trunk which had heart shake or the beam could suddenly and calamitously collapse.

The best use was of the nut with sweet chestnuts roasted and filling the winter air with a delicious aroma.