A TREE WITH A SECRET WITHIN

[Grandad]

I am sure that I have mentioned The Westgate Gardens, in my home city, before. It is one of several public parks within the city and one that has a changing image as the council gardeners fill the beds with seasonal plants and flowers throughout the year. Right now it is tulips in full bloom and predominantly red, making a striking splash of colour. The gardens have a long history as a public place and a place of industry. (Principally a parchment factory in the seventeenth century) In mid Victorian times Tower House and its gardens became private property until descendents of the original owners gifted it to the city in the mid thirties.

A sunny afternoon yesterday so I went for a stroll through the gardens to the end where they just pass under the city ring road. Here the walls are covered with graffiti. I seriously object to graffiti in residential areas but find it decorative and even artistic in places like underpasses and railway arches..

My clutch of nearly 50 pictures was whittled down to 11 and I have posted all of them here. These first 8 are just views as I walked through the gardens.






There are two arches within the gardens. This first one is reputedly Norman but that is unconfirmed.



This second arch is within the garden and quite likely to have been removed from the nearby ruins of St Augustines Abbey in Victorian times as a garden ornament. The ‘Norman’ arch may well have arrived in the same manner.



Whatever the stories behind them they are both splendid features within the garden.

And finally to the title of my thread. In front of Tower House there is an Oriental Plane tree (Platanus Orientalis), that is over 200 years old. It has an incredible trunk which is more than 25 feet in circumference, and very strangely shaped. There is an unconfirmed rumour that when the tree was quite young a cast iron bench was made that closely fitted around the trunk.



The story goes that as the tree grew, the trunk gradually enveloped the bench until now when it is completely ‘devoured’. I will let you decide how likely you think that story could be true.

[Horus]

A lovely set of pictures Grandad, makes you feel glad to be alive all bright and Spring like
I can well belive that could happen as I have seen trees enclosing themselves around things in them or on them

[Ruby Slippers]

Love 'em, Grandad! I haven't been to Canterbury for donkey's years, but, looking at your photos, maybe it's time I paid another visit there!

[Grandad]

I can well belive that could happen as I have seen trees enclosing themselves around things in them or on them

A case in point H. I have a small oak tree on the embankment. It was just a sapling 46 years ago when we moved here. About 20 - 25 years ago I hung two swings on what was then a larger tree. I suspended eyelets from hoops which secured to the branches with plates and nuts.
I cut the ropes down about 3 years ago as the swings were no longer used. This evening this is the state of the growth around two of the hoops, one from each side of the tree. I believe I was able to unbolt the other two but these are being overgrown by the branches.


On one the plate and nut is still visible, on the other it has been completelyovergrown.

So, who knows, after a couple of hundred years perhaps that cast iron seat is now inside that tree.

Perhaps the tree regards it as a foreign body and like an oyster with a grain of sand, covers it to make it more comfortable.

[Kiya]

Fantastic set of pictures & so colourful

I especially like the second one & the old black/white wiggly houses, would love to own one of those

[Jayway]

Number one is lovely Grandad. Can you hire a man to pole you up the river, that looks good. I believe you about the tree, have a photo somewhere of a tree grown around a motorbike, your tree is a very odd shape. I stayed in an ancient house, Kiya, sat up in bed and whacked my head on a beam, couldnt stand up in the bath and everywhere one walked it creaked. The floors were all sloping one way or the other, drop something and it was gone, rolled away. I do not like graffiti like that, all the morons seem to do is write their names in huge undecipherable letters -

[Grandad]

Jay, the river divides just outside the city so it passes through the city as two streams. There are river trips for visitors on both streams, this one by punt, the other is rowed. The bit between the streams on which most of the old city centre sits, is called the Island of Binewith.

When we first married we rented the little 16th century cottage at the end of the row in this picture. So we know all about uneven floors and low beams.

[Kiya]

Jayway.....sounds like a great typical ancient house hope you had a few ghosts to go with it

Grandad ....that looks a quaint little street

[Mad Dilys]

I had as a wedding present a map of Kent executed by John Speed " and are to be sold in Popeshead Alley".

Unfortunately it's in store at the moment, I really miss it. On the edge there was a small map of Rochester and one of Canterbury.

The date it was printed would have been about 1640-ish as a guess. I loved it, can't wait to get it back.

[Grandad]

I love all maps MD, old and new. Your John Speed map is probably the 1611 version with the Canterbury map in the bottom left corner.
You can see how clearly the city wall is defined on that map and happilly most of the wall survives to this day. The city within the wall is only about 500 yards across.
I feel priviledged to live in this lovely old city even with the many thousands of students at the four universities.

[Mad Dilys]

It's very interesting to look at the map and see such famous places missing, like Tunbridge Wells and Brighton, but Snodland (where I first lived) and North Frith which was an enclosure then, but a 2,000 acre private estate when I worked on it in the 1960s.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Wonderful photos Grandad. I particularly like #7 as I quite like the combo of flowers and all the boats. Quite fancy #8 too.

I always like spring flowers and tulips give off such great colour - BUT - for such a short period of time (and the deer here love them so often all you get out of your tulip bulb is a nub of green)