Axe falls on mystical tree (From This Is Wiltshire)

Axe falls on mystical tree

12:13pm Thursday 29th April 2004 in

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AN HISTORIC tree in Enfield's Trent Park was chopped down after being deemed "unsafe" by council chiefs last week.

Located in Camlet Moat, the 100-year-old hornbeam has become a shrine or "rag tree", which some believe to be of special spiritual significance.

It is said to have attracted people from miles around, to hang ribbons on its branches in the belief they will act as blessings.

However, following an English Heritage-commissioned survey of the tree by Enfield Council officers, it was labelled a potential danger to the public and an order was made for the tree to be felled.

A council spokesman said: "The tree was structurally unsound and leaning at a 45-degree angle, and we couldn't prune it as it would not have been safe.

"Our first and only priority is public safety and, at the end of the day, we have got to put preservation of human life first."

The tree was cut down in two stages, on Wednesday and Thursday of last week.

But devotees of the tree have slammed the council this week for its actions.

Chris Street, who wrote a book in 1990 called The Visionary Landscape, which pictured the tree and detailed its significance as part of a series of spiritual sites around London, spoke to the Independent this week.

He said: "It was a splendid tree and seeing what the latest additions were was interesting, and attractive.

"The local mystics think it is a place of vision, power and energy."

He also claimed that an Indian holy man had travelled to the site after seeing it in a vision.