The Hermitage Wood Horse Chestnuts, Stoke Park

The biggest trees in Hermitage Wood are not the native oaks or ash you might expect, but three horse chestnuts, a species from the Balkans. The Bristol Tree Forum records all three as veterans. The largest, on the eastern edge of the wood, is 5.5 metres round. The other two, 5.05 and 5 metres, stand in a corner of the wood and on the northern edge of the main path, all within about 300 metres of each other. The Forum thinks they were probably planted for aesthetic reasons, and that they are probably about 300 years old. That age is the Forum's guess, and we could not find a second source to confirm it. If it holds, they would be old for their kind, a species that only reached Britain in the 17th century. The wood sits inside Stoke Park, a public park on the north-eastern edge of Bristol. Nobody has published who planted them, or exactly when. They are at their best in May, when the big leaves are fresh and the trees carry their upright spikes of white flowers, and again in autumn when the conkers come down. If you know more about the trio, tell us.