Life’s a beech
TO enter a beechwood is to enter a cathedral; the same immense grey pillars, the shared mysteried gloom. The equal stillness, the equal echoing emptiness. Vita Sackville-West knew this, writing about the beeches at Knole: ‘Your stone-grey columns a cathedral nave/ Processional above the earth’s brown glory!’
It is the other way around, of course, as to enter a cathedral is to enter the vast silence of the beech grove; the Gothic architects of our great houses of prayer were inspired by the smooth-skinned beech and its elegant ability to buttress the roof of the heavens, together with its gift to cast an atmosphere of sacred sanctuary. John Evelyn, the: ‘They make spreading trees, and noble shades with their well furnish’d and glistering leaves… The shade unpropitious to corn and grass, but sweet, and of all the rest, most refreshing to the weary shepherd.’
