The St Paul's Churchyard Planes

Four planes stood on the north side of St Paul's churchyard until the Great Storm of 1987 took one of them down. The three that remain are, according to one detailed local history of the cathedral, over 250 years old, which would put their planting in the middle of the 18th century, when Wren's dome was still the newest thing on the skyline and the ground beneath them was a working burial place. That age comes from a single account. The London Parks and Gardens Trust inventory for the churchyard agrees only that these are among the oldest plane trees in the City, without giving a number or a date, so read 250 years as the best figure anyone has published rather than a measured one. What they lived through is less disputed. On the night of 29 December 1940 incendiary bombs set the streets around the cathedral alight and burned out much of the City. The dome held, and so did the planes. Londoners later planted this species everywhere precisely because it shrugs off soot and smoke; these three were in the ground a century before that fashion started. This is an ensemble rather than one specimen: three unnamed trees, none of them individually catalogued or given coordinates by any source. Stand on the paved path along the north side and all three are in one view. The pin marks that garden, not a particular trunk.