Treehouses, living the high life

With timeless appeal, whether balanced on branches or supported by stilts, treehouses enable visitors to look down on the world

- DANIEL PEMBREY

Many of us grew up playing in treehouses, hence they represent fond childhood memories. For adults, the appeal goes deeper. Primitive human beings needed access to vantage points and to refuges from dangerous animals and pests, and arguably the instinctive appeal of treehouses hasn’t altered greatly since. It taps into some ancestral part of us.

Treehouses existed in Roman and Renaissance times and have remained popular since the late-18th century. Mature trees were once used as columns in temples. With their roots in the ground and branches in the sky, great trees have been identified as a model for Gothic architecture. The implication is that significant treehouses shared some of the spirit-lifting qualities of temples or Gothic buildings. Alas, unlike those more vaunted structures, few have survived. However, a well-preserved example can be found at Pitchford Hall in Shropshire.

What makes the treehouse there so unusual is that it was the best-preserved building in the hall’s grounds when James Nason became co-owner in 2016. “Altered and restored at various points in its history, it had clearly been well-loved and looked after,” he says. “Pitchford Hall is now open to the public again, after being closed for 25 years, and visitors gravitate once more to the treehouse. They ask me, ‘Did your father-in-law put it here?’ I have to inform them that it was known to have existed before 1700.”