Wellingtonia 63

Captured, if that is the right word, from the moving car heading west on the M25 as it approached the junction with the M23. They might be small in Street View but it seems reasonably clear that there are several Wellingtonia on the skyline.

Unfortunately, going around the back in Street View does not turn up anything better, with the snap above coming from the western end of Spring Bottom Lane, looking south. A fine larch to the right?

Thinking that a lot of Wellingtonias started life in the gardens of rich tree nuts, I turned to the maps offered by the Scottish National Library. In the snap above, what is now Spring Bottom Lane runs across the middle, ending at what is now Warwick Wold Road running up into Hilltop Lane. One supposes that Spring Bottom Lane runs east to west along the spring line along the south facing slope. Lots of quarries and chalk pits. But also Rockshaw House, middle left. And the trees in question might well be part of the line of trees running east from the house.

I can't find out much about Rockshaw House, at least I have not yet, beyond the fact that it has a lodge and gate on Warwick Wold Road and that at one time it was occupied by the Gardiner family who gifted the north aisle window to the church at Chaldon, as it happens a church we visited on account of its famous wall painting, a visit noticed at reference 2.

Concluding, I decided that the house may well still exist, even if most of the land has been sold off. With the gates in the second snap above possibly belonging to someone who now owns some of it. A someone who is keen to make his mark. In any event, the house certainly looks to be of an age and style which fits with rich tree nut. Who perhaps made his fortune out of biscuits or out of pies, to borrow a couple of rich men from Agatha.

While the rules committee ruled that I could score just one Wellingtonia. There were very probably more, but they were not going to allow more given that I did not succeed in getting anywhere near any of them, not even in cyberspace.

PS: later on, BH suggested checking in Pevsner for Surrey, brought to us, I now know, with help from the Leverhulme Trust (soap and margarine), Arthur Guinness (booze) and the late ABC Television (commercial television). No trace of Rockshaw House that I could find at all, so presumably, if still extant, judged insignificant. On the other hand, a detail from the lurid wall painting is featured on the front of the dust cover. No accounting for tastes.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/wellingtonia-62.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/05/chaldon.html.

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