Submissions of trees gone but not forgotten...
While Henfield is lucky to have many trees of historic and botanical interest, we must travel into the past to visit the many other rare species once in the village. In many cases these were linked to the activities of prolific local 19th century botanist William Borrer.
All images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)*
(*unless specified otherwise)
All images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)*
(*unless specified otherwise)
The Fallen Titan - submitted by Robert G, December 2020
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This Giant Redwood, or Sequoiadendron Giganteum, never failed to make a striking impact - only enhanced by its incongruous modern surroundings at Mill Drive. It was arguably Henfield's most impressive tree.
Planted by famous local botanist William Borrer, it overlooked the village from Barrow Hill long after his famed garden of 6600 species receded into memory, and then history. Ultimately, it was to have a dramatic and premature end. Struck by lightning in a summer storm in 2009, it crushed a car and was felled, just weeks after this photo was taken in June of that year. It was likely around 150 years old, still small for its type and 3000 years the junior of its oldest fellow growing natively in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The well known Lucombe Oak further up the road looks on as the likely last survivor of Borrer's garden, but today, a walk up this road reveals not a single sign of where Henfield's American titan once stood. |
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Pine Tree, King James' Lane, mid 1980s
- submitted by Alan B, December 2020 This mature pine tree stood at the crossways in King James's Lane, and carpeted the lane with its cones and pine needles. It was blown down in the 1987 hurricane and fell along the backs of the bungalows at Springhills, fortunately not damaging any of the properties. 
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The Lebanon Cedar
- submitted by Robert G, January 2020 This immense cedar of many spreading boughs was pictured below in a local newspaper report of 1973. Like the giant redwood tree above, it was once one of the many trees in botanist William Borrer's garden, but could not ultimately survive the development. Borrer's son, Dawson, travelled in the Middle East in 1843, bringing back cedar seedlings from Mount Lebanon, some of which were also planted at Springhills in Henfield, surviving there until the 1980s. His adventures on this trip can be read in his 1845 book, A Journey from Naples to Jerusalem. 
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