Nearly Home Trees

History

Historians believe the beech trees were planted at the top of the hill in around 1900. Like their name the exact reasons as to why are subject to various rumours and ideas.

Some of these include:

• many have claimed that the trees mark an ancient burial site
• for those hoping for something romantic, a farmer constructed the plantation in memory of his late wife
• as a landscape feature marking the northern edge of the Lifton Park Estate.
• they were intended to serve as a windbreak for livestock grazing on the hillside.
• the trees are an example of those planted in clumps on hills all over the country by cattle drovers, to mark water sources so they knew where they could take their animals to drink. See also Whitenham Clumps in Oxfordshire as another example of this. Although cattle drovers had ended long before the late 19th century so perhaps this is more of a rumour.
• as cover for pheasants. Although as beech trees they may be considered too high for this purpose.

Perhaps the most realistic and least romantic unfortunately is that trees cover the site of an old quarry which the landowner sought to obscure. It seems that the trees may not be a unique as hoped for. A larger example of this type used to exist on a prominent hill between Lamerton and Tavistock but this was destroyed by the storms in 1987.