Joseph Tubb & The Poem Tree
Joseph Tubb and the Poem Tree
On the trunk of a tree, on Castle Hill, are the scarcely legible remains of a poem carved by Joseph Tubb over 150 years ago.
Joseph Tubb's Poem Tree
Locally, a poem by Joseph Tubb has made a huge impact. Joseph Tubb (1805-1879) lived in Lavender Cottage in Warborough Green.
His ambition was to be a Wood Carver, but his father pressured him to follow in the family tradition and become a maltster. He lived a quiet country life, remaining a bachelor, but had 'a few little revolutionary adventures', one of which led to a short term in Oxford gaol.
Tubb was a stout opponent of the enclosures of the commons, and he pulled down the fences - 'an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the landlord magistrates'.
Joseph Tubb was also a Victorian vandal in another more creative way. He carved a poem on one of the largest beech trees on the eastern side of Castle Hill Clump.
He took a tent and a ladder and spent the summer between 1844 - 45 scoring the letters for a 20 line poem. It was suggested he even carved his initials and date before starting to carve the poem.
The poem highlights Joseph's passion for the landscape, and is a history of the surrounding area in a nutshell. The discrepancies in wording from a written original which survived for many years, are said to be because Joseph often forgot to take the original with him and would carve from memory.
The Remains Of The Poem
The tree could have been over 100 years old when he carved the poem in 1844 and it continued to grow, struggling to survive through the 1980's and finally succumbing in the early 1990s.
A tracing made in 1965 shows the lettering still visible but distorted by differential stretching of the bark as the tree expanded in girth.
In 1994, 150 years after the poem was carved on the tree, the verses were inscribed on a plaque mounted on a block of sarsen stone close to the tree, to be read and enjoyed by many future generations.
References In The Poem
- Culchelms grave refers, not to Brightwell Barrow, but to the more distant Cwichelslea or Scutchamers Knob, a hilltop visible on the Berkshire Downs, above East Hendred.
- Cwichelm was an Anglo-Saxon prince of Wessex.
The Poem Tree - A Special Place
Although only a few letters of the original poem are legible, the tree remains a place to which people are attracted. Often bunches of flowers can be found in the hollow at its base, and in the spring time daffodils and primroses appear. Poems have been attached to the flowers and on one occasion ashes were left from a cremation.
