John's Blog

Croft Parkland is noted for its trees, perhaps the most notable are the rows of Spanish Sweet Chestnut Trees, with their twisted trunks and the barks with their deep fissures. However if you are a lover of tress you don’t need to search for long to find other trees of note.

This is the Quarry Oak possibly 1000 years old.

Sir William’s Oak, the tree under which Sir William died. During the English civil war the Crofts were Royalists and Sir William Croft was killed in June 1645 after an engagement at Stokesay Castle.

The Candelabra Tree, pollared centuries ago has taken on the shape of the candle holder

The Bower Oak a triple stemmed tree noted in the 1870 for “its boughs that trail on the ground” and back then “around it a seat is placed”

Some trees have taken on some amazing shapes and forms.

Close to the Quarry Oak this Sweet Chestnut Tree has a bough growing at right angles and then has turned upwards producing what seems like a giant elbow.

Many of the old Oak trees are hollow like this one just north of the main car park.

This Sweet Chestnut Tree had started to fall, when taken down it’s girth became more apparent.

This old Oak is long since dead but it produced burrs that made it hard to age.

Some of the trees are natural regeneration others are planted deliberately.

These Beech Trees line the road from the car park to the Castle

These Lime trees were planted, perhaps in the wrong place, to define what was once the western approach to the Castle

A double row and further on a triple row of Spanish Sweet Chestnut Trees, planted between 400 to 350 years ago.

An unusual orchard of Hawthorne trees thought to once have been root stock for Medlar. There are about 200 years old

Some trees take on different qualities depending on the season or the weather.

Without its leaves this tree looks like a skeleton magnificent in silhouette against the sky line.

A sharp frost, not snow, has coated this tree in ice.

The Beech trees drop their leaves to produce a golden carpet in Autumn

Nature has an impact sometimes in unusual ways.

This Horse Chestnut tree split half way up its trunk leaving a jumble of branches and boughs all around.

A lightning strike left this old Sweet Chestnut in flames that could be seen for some distance.

Like so many other dead trees this trunk has become home to many creatures.

Tree trunks have an amazing protective outer layer, the Sweet Chestnut is just one example.

Some trees we plant others we chop down.

It was a cold frosty morning when children from a local school helped to plant out about 100 saplings.

Dozens of compartments were erected and we planted many hundreds of indigenous tree species.

Prior to planting new trees the ground has to be cleared, the timber that is felled is turned into chips used to fire up our bio-mass boiler.

Some of the wood is reduced to firewood and used in the castle wood burners and sold locally.

People have been managing trees, on what is today a parkland, for centuries. The ageing trees tell a story of the past. Today we are planting and managing for the future and it is very satisfying.