The Victoria History of Staffordshire: Tamworth and Drayton Bassett

tree experts and modern professional arboriculture. The third chapter discusses tree management in the medieval period, and this is followed by four chapters defined broadly by garden history including Chapter 5 on arboriculture in the age of formal gardens and Chapter 6 on arboriculture and the English landscape garden. Each chapter has a similar structure, starting with a broad historical overview, followed by a concise and very valuable discussion of the sources available for the history of arboriculture. In earlier chapters manuscript evidence and woodcuts are of great significance. A splendid example is provided by a pair of images (p. 50) from the Julius Calendar in the British Library (Cotton MS Julius A VI). One shows three workers pruning or lopping woody vegetation in February; the other relating to June depicts workers coppicing and pollarding trees with axes and loading cut wood onto a cart. In later chapters very effective use is made of estate maps, garden plans, engravings and paintings of garden landscapes. Examples are taken from contemporary gardening texts and detailed extracts from plans such as that of Badminton in 1707 by Knyff and Kip (p. 136). Later chapters use a range of historical photographs, together with excellent modern photographs and some fascinating examples of advertisements covering topiary; chainsaws, tree moving equipment, and stump grinding machines. The core of the text of each chapter is a careful analysis of the changing role of arboriculture examined through the lens of changing styles of ornamental gardening. The principal sources include gardening and horticultural texts, forestry and silvicultural manuals, newspapers and magazines. There are useful and very informative discussions about the changing nature of the work of tree experts including topiary, the management of avenues, clumps and orchards, and the impact of the astonishing increase in ornamental tree species which were introduced and popularised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Particular attention is paid to the development of arboricultural techniques and tools. The invention and rapid spread of lightweight chainsaws in the second half of the twentieth century transformed the ways in trees could be managed. Until very recently much pruning and shaping of trees was undertaken by workers who climbed into the trees, using long ladders. Modern techniques using ropes and safety harnesses were not widely introduced until the 1960s. Overall this splendid book provides an illuminating and complete history of the practical management of trees and is to be strongly recommended to all those with an interest in garden, woodland and landscape history.