82. Shoreham Chestnut

An ancient sweet chestnut, a remnant of a bygone aristocratic landscape, now holds court in a Sussex park.

All that is left of Shoreham-by Sea’s Buckingham House is its ornate classical facade among the mock-Georgian houses on Woodview. This house would once have looked out over the extensive parkland of what is now Buckingham Park with a row of old sweet chestnuts standing prominently in the foreground. Two ancient chestnuts still grow towards the western edge of the park, the larger of the two has a dramatic hollow trunk. They have been here for many centuries, longer even than the remains of Buckingham House.

Species details

Sweet Chestnut
Castanea sativa

Where to find it

Buckingham Park, Shoreham-by-Sea BN43 6BX
///apparatus.landed.prune | 50.841648, -0.267286

Sweet chestnut notes

Majestic sweet chestnut trees are frequent throughout Britain and Ireland, and very old trees are not uncommon. While they are not native to these islands, they have been here for a very long time and can be described as an archaeophyte, a species introduced before 1500 AD. It is thought the Romans, who valued their protein-rich nuts and their fast-growing timber, brought them to England from southern Europe. Today, in the south east of England, coppice woodlands of sweet chestnut are a common sight, and some are still traditionally managed to produce a sustainable crop of wood for fencing and, traditionally in Kent, hop poles. 

Beyond these commercial purposes, sweet chestnuts were often planted as landscape features in the parks and gardens of wealthy landowners. Fine examples can still be seen in landscapes which, like those at Shoreham, Greenwich and Ipswich, are now public parks, but were once the private domains of the rich and powerful. 

Spiny fruits and glossy leaves of a sweet chestnut in late summer