Nature's own cathedral

Our tallest native tree 'most lovely of all', the stately beech creates a shaded environment that few plants can survive. John Lewis-Stempel ventures into the enchanted woods

- John Lewis-Stempel

IF oak is the hail-fellow king of the English wood, beech is the ice queen. Oak is one trope for England, hearty, rustic and guileless; the smooth-boled beech is the alternative Albion, the shadow-self, secret, minimalist, spiritual. The Gothic architects of our great houses of prayer took inspiration from the beechwood; the way the immense grey pillars of the trees support the roof of Heaven, the sense of sacred gloom cast by the dense foliage.

The arrival of the beech here is contentious. Sometimes, it is claimed as a Roman import, but beech pollen has been found in Hampshire dating from 6000-BC, some 500 years before the Channel departed us from mainland Europe. The beech was here when Britain became an island, even if it was the last of the native trees to colonise the isles as the Great Freeze, with its glaciers and frost-frozen waste, retreated. Beech advanced under its own steam up to a line between the Severn Estuary and the Wash, then halted; it does not set good seed in the cooler North. To this day, the natural parish of beech is southern England, southern Wales; neutral, slightly acidic soil is its preferred habitat, with the free-draining limestone of the Cotswolds, the Downs and the Chilterns particular bastions. The tree, however, will stand in heavy, chill dirt if need be. The Queen has her fortitude.

Most of our beech woodlands are such recent and intentional plantings; the stately beech tree became a fashionable accessory to stately parkland in the 18th century, set out in groves and avenues. The English can prettify landscape like few others; a beech ‘hangar’ on the Downs has set many a poet and naturalist into fluttery exaltation. The Revd Gilbert White of Selborne, pondering the beech hangars around his Hampshire home, was moved to write