00:00My name's Richard Gray. What we're looking at here is a rather splendid sycamore tree that's
00:06estimated to be something like 250 years old and what's particularly interesting about it is the
00:13fact that it's got four trunks. Locally it's known as the Four Shires sycamore because we're close to
00:19a thing called the Four Shires Stone and it's evocative of that. It's a wonderful citadel
00:26for local invertebrates. You can't get better than a big old tree if you're an insect and boy we've
00:35got plenty around here but we won't have if the church get their way because they want to cut
00:40this wonderful tree down because they claim in spite of evidence to the contrary that the tree
00:48was causing damage to their relatively new 40 year old or so new vicarage. Evidence suggests
00:56it's actually rather more complex than a simple tree. It's the whole story of global warming
01:03and so on and in addition to that this tree was owned by the church prior to them building
01:11their new vicarage. They actually owned it but consented to it being left in their own garden
01:20after their new vicarage was built and I inherited the tree together with my wife at the time in
01:27something like 1992 and it's remained there ever since. Our building which is about the
01:34same distance as the new building from the tree built in about 1770 has no signs of any
01:42damage whatsoever and in fact the new vicarage you'd struggle to see any signs of damage to that.
01:49Most of the damage that's been pointed out to me by our friends in the church is actually inside
01:55the new vicarage and if you look at their engineers drawings you will see a thing called the area of
02:02concern which is epicentral to the new vicarage and shows nothing on the outside which could have
02:09possibly been caused by the tree. So here we are locking horns with an organisation that's supposed to
02:16have the pastoral care of its community in its hands that's doing exactly the opposite. A letter out of the
02:23blue claiming that the tree is doing this damage threatening to charge something like 80,000 pounds if the
02:31tree isn't taken down. Their own engineers report has the words in it we've looked at the tree the tree is not the
02:39cause more likely it is the hot weather that we've had recently and there we are what do we do I don't
02:47think we're going to pay we're not going to take the tree down and the church is still threatening despite
02:52the evidence to send us a rather large bill. Bishop spare that tree.
02:59Bishop.
03:18Bishop.
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