Removing a fallen tree

Ben Goddard, a member of St Kea’s Church of England church in Kea, just south of Truro, Cornwall, got in touch through the EBTS website with Huw Crompton in 2021. A big old box tree (around 7m tall and wide) in the graveyard had taken a tumble onto a number of old tombstones and could not remain where it was any longer.

The volunteer gardeners were booked to clear the finer branch work and on the 10th March Huw arrived to collect about 0.5ton of timber. Working conditions were easy, the logs not presenting themselves vertically. Inside 2 hours, Huw’s Discovery was loaded and headed back to Hampshire with some lovely straight boxwood timber at a wide diameter. On inspection of the base of the tree it had clearly rotted and tall box trees on deep soils often can’t stay upright.

Ben’s daughter Beatrice Goddard speeded things up for the lads, leaving not a great deal to do for the gardening team to fully open up the space. Hopefully not too many headstones damaged.

The timber will be processed and dried to make up orders for Irish pipes and large whistles as well as the usual oboes, flutes and recorders.