Country diary: Sweet chestnuts are luminous on a gloomy summer day | Virginia Spiers

St Dominic, Tamar Valley: They're scattered through the steep deciduous woodland, and downstream in the more extensive Braunder WoodSweet chestnut trees are loaded with catkins of pale yellow flowers; on this gloomy day the golden crowns of old trees appear luminous among the dull green of surrounding oaks. Some trees tower from the overgrown quarry near Boetheric where stone was excavated and shipped downstream for building houses in Durnford Street, Plymouth. Other chestnuts shine out of woodland above the mudbanks in the new intertidal habitat adjoining Cotehele Quay. Across the tidal river, with its summer-green reedbeds, they are scattered through a strip of steep deciduous woodland, as well as downstream in the more extensive Braunder Wood.Chestnuts have long featured on this estate and in the associated parkland of Mount Edgcumbe overlooking the Tamar Estuary. In the Great Blizzard of 1891, thousands of trees were lost at Cotehele House, including a Spanish or sweet chestnut depicted in a drawing of 1847, with a circumference of more than 26 feet. Near the entrance to Cotehele's gardens and Tudor house, the tall trunk of a spreading tree has developed a distinctive spiral form; hopefully it will shed loads of mature nuts in the autumn, appreciated by visitors to this National Trust property. Continue reading...