Sweet chestnut trees are loaded with catkins of pale yellow flowers; on this gloomy day the golden crowns of old trees appear luminous among the dull green of surrounding oaks. Some trees tower from the overgrown quarry near Boetheric where stone was excavated and shipped downstream for building houses in Durnford Street, Plymouth. Other chestnuts shine out of woodland above the mudbanks in the new intertidal habitat adjoining Cotehele Quay. Across the tidal river, with its summer-green reedbeds, they are scattered through a strip of steep deciduous woodland, as well as downstream in the more extensive Braunder Wood.
Chestnuts have long featured on this estate and in the associated parkland of Mount Edgcumbe overlooking the Tamar Estuary. In the Great Blizzard of 1891, thousands of trees were lost at Cotehele House, including a Spanish or sweet chestnut depicted in a drawing of 1847, with a circumference of more than 26 feet. Near the entrance to Cotehele’s gardens and Tudor house, the tall trunk of a spreading tree has developed a distinctive spiral form; hopefully it will shed loads of mature nuts in the autumn, appreciated by visitors to this National Trust property.
Outside the formal flowerbeds, lawns, uncut swards, orchards and terraced gardens, the three-sided Prospect Tower is set in a pasture grazed by a herd of inquisitive bullocks. This isolated tower affords all-round views – towards the mined landscape of Kit Hill and Hingston Down, across the riverside village of Calstock and its railway viaduct towards Dartmoor, and south towards the Sound. Fields, used for grazing and fodder, contrast with the darkness of hedgerow trees; parched grass has been refreshed by showery rain and its continuation will allow extra cuts of silage for winter keep.
From this vantage point, we see yet more flowering chestnuts; the nearest specimens edge old woods above the dark greens of regenerating woodland in the precipitous Danescombe Valley, once intensively cultivated for early flowers and strawberries; further away and just distinguishable are gilded treetops above the millstream and, closer to home, in Nanie Rowe’s Wood.
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