Old trees: a fine veteran sweet chestnut

Old trees have a strange fascination for me and this sweet chestnut is not exception! I spotted this beauty, a fine veteran tree, at the fabulous Penshurst Place & Gardens. I asked David Alderman of The Tree Register, an organisation full of facts and figures who have A unique record of Notable and Ancient Trees in Britain and Ireland. David told me "the common limes there date back to 1798 and so a Sweet chestnut of this size could be from any time 1550-1750." We measured a rough girth at 1.5m of around 9.5m. It has living bits and dying bits, and all kinds of nobbles and bobbles and even a duck nest in a cavity in the end of a big dead limb. The team on the estate are clearly taking good care of the tree although it did seem very compacted around the base. So while the exact age of this champion specimen is unknown, we can be sure it has a few hundred years under it's belt!