Sherborne's Ancestor Oaks to be planted.

I’m pleased to say that we now have identified spots for all 17 of the Ancestor oaks, to be planted out around the parish in memory of the names on the village war memorial.

Image: Oaks in Sherborne planted 300 years ago, the parents of our saplings.

These saplings will be planted out on the weekend of 7/8 March, just in time for the ground to warm up. I’m requesting volunteers to help. We have obtained wooden posts and chicken wire to provide some protection from wild life. So we need:

1. Capable people to dig holes for trees and posts, and also dig up the saplings from the allotment. Also to saw up 2x2s and nail to the posts.
2. Canny people to sprinkle some mycrorhyzal fungi on the roots before we insert the tree in its hole
3. Careful people to snip lengths of chicken wire to fit around the posts
4. Conscientious people to staple the chicken wire to the posts
5. Crucial people to tap the brass name plaques onto the rail.

Each tree will be associated with a name from the war memorial and the simple brass plaque will have their name in full and the words “lest we forget”

The locations of the trees to be planted are as follows:

1. Dawn Tremaine has offered two spaces either side of her gates
2. Sherborne House has offered 3 spaces, to be associated with the names of three men who worked in Sherborne House
3. Mill Hill Farm by the crossroads has offered two spaces in memory of two names associated with the farm, including John Houlton, murdered by the Japanese. We have requested permission to plant another on the triangle just opposite, to provide three guardians as one enters the village.
4. Haycroft Farm has offered a number of slots beside the footpath that runs through the farm.
5. A few other spaces are also identified, but the above are enough for one weekend assuming we have enough volunteers.

Please let me know if you can come. Bring spades, drills and drivers, pliers, saws, hammers and a good heart. If you only have a heart, come anyway and take some photos or hold things in place. In due course we’ll create a map showing the names of each of those being remembered, and detail the “Parent” oak, which is one of the three-hundred-year-old oaks dotted around the local area. In future perhaps we’ll arrange some walks to view and check each tree and talk about those villagers who gave their lives in the wars and who the trees remember. They are not strangers. They lived in the houses we live in today.

We’ll meet on the allotment towards the east of the village at 10.00 am on Saturday 7 March to dig up the saplings and then split to plant the trees.

As a community we are planting English oak trees under whose shade we may never sit, as a recognition of the past, and a commitment to the future. I think it’s a better show of our heritage than a scruffy flag zipped tied upside down to a lamp post. What else are you going to do on 7 March 2026 that will last 500 years? Something that will provide a fabulous bio-environment for thousands of species for centuries? Something that will be admired and treasured by generation after generation? Something that defines the importance of our heritage as a community? These young men of Sherborne lost their lives in war - the trees help us remember their short lives and will stand as guardians, in their name, for the community they left behind, for years and years to come. They will be treasured, I think. Lest we forget.