The Saville Road Horse Chestnut

The largest horse chestnut on the Downs has bleeding canker, and when the Bristol Tree Forum last looked, it was carrying on regardless. The Forum's survey calls it diseased but still vigorous, with a trunk five metres round, and estimates it at about 200 years old. That is an estimate from the survey and nothing firmer, so read it as somewhere between 150 and 250. It stands beside Saville Road on the edge of Durdham Down, the open common in the north of the city that the Downs Committee manages for the public. The Forum thinks the line of chestnuts along Westbury Park Road was probably planted at the same time, and notes that a number of other trees have succumbed in the past few years and had to be felled. Which is why this page comes with a warning. The Forum's survey carries no date. Its list goes back to 2016, with comments running to 2023, and we have found no recent photograph of this trunk. It may still be standing, diseased and vigorous as described. It may have gone the way of the trees around it. The pin, from the survey's grid reference, is approximate. If you walk past Saville Road, tell us which it is, and send a photograph if the tree still stands. If it is, come in May, when the white candles stand upright over the crown.