Returned to the housing estate which was St. Ebba's, the home to Wellingtonia 25, last week to see what else we could pick up. With BH on this occasion, as she remembered the early days of this estate, when she as an officer of the Residents' Association used to take an interest in planning applications and show houses.
Given that this tree was wider for its height than is usual, I took a closer shot, from which the zoom above is taken. Characteristic scale leaves clearly visible if you click to enlarge.
Then, wanting to be sure where exactly this tree was, I tried to find it on gmaps, which took a good deal many more minutes than I care to mention. Tricky things aerial photographs. But I got there in end, on the appropriately named Redwood Drive, with our tree being more or less in the middle of the snap above. With the red spot for the people at reference 2. Don't know what you have to do to earn such a spot - or indeed to get rid of it when you have a career change to poodle hair care, or whatever.
Got slightly confused about the direction of the eastern tail of Hook Road Arena, from which I often used to exit after car booters.
But got there in the end, coming across this specimen, large if a little sparse, set on a low mound in middle of what might be an overflow pond. One of at least two on the cluster estate as a whole - which reminded me of talk from TB about the tricky drainage up here, on what used to be farm land, with water tending to hang about on top of the clay. Eastern tail of arena visible beyond.
Odd that I have never noticed it before, as I must have passed that way often enough. Even before I took up counting them, it was still a striking tree.
The scene at the Epileptic Colony at the start of the twentieth century, with thanks to the Scottish National Library. The buildings marked here, or at least most of them, appear to be alive and well on gmaps today. While to the south east, between the colony and Epsom proper, one had the Epsom sewage farm.
A few days later, that is to say over breakfast today, we discussed marking all the Wellingtonia, young and old, on a large map, perhaps printed on the flashy new printer to be found at Ai Printers, down on the High Street. Conducting a census if you will. Something which might do for a geography project at the nearby Blenheim High, but might otherwise keep a couple of pensioners busy for a few days. Maybe such a project would bring on my satellite view reading skills, presently poor.
PS: Ai Printers have not been open that long and their shop appears to contain a lot of expensive equipment. It is good to have a print shop in town again and they served me well enough on the couple of occasions that I used them. Let's hope their ambitions have not been damaged beyond repair by the shutdown.
Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/wellingtonia-25.html.
Reference 2: http://informed-intelligence.com/.
Reference 3: https://aiprinters.co.uk/about-us/. Would I manage to buy a suitable pdf from the people in Scotland, suitable for these people here in Epsom to print for me? What about Ordnance Survey for a more up to date map?
Group search key: wgc.
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