I live next door to Headington Hill Park in Oxford, which I think is the nicest park in the city, laid out as it was a century and a half ago now by the Morrell family as part of the parkland setting for Headington Hill Hall, which is now occupied by my employers at Oxford Brookes University. The park was split from the hall grounds some decades ago before the Hall was rented to Robert Maxwell to house his family (the "best council house in Britain" he apparently used to say) and has been managed by the city council ever since.

For a couple of weeks now there has been tree felling going on in all the city's parks as part of a biennial survey of trees that might be getting sick or dangerous. Anyway, I went round the park carefully checking all those with red crosses on, which I assumed were the ones that were going to be taken out and was quite sanguine about it - about a dozen out of several hundred trees in the park and all had either been obviously damaged in last year's heavy storms that felled on in our grounds next door or were clearly lifeless.

However on our daily lunchtime walk I was appalled to see this:

The second most interesting chestnut tree in the park has been hacked around - I don't know yet whether it is actually pollarded (can you do that to something as slow growing as a chestnut?) or in the penultimate stage of being removed completely. But I'm bloody fuming. I am sure there was no red cross on it. A few weeks ago they did cut off one of the most precarious looking branches (but no worse than some other beautiful chestnuts nearby) and whilst I was annoyed by that I thought the pain was all over for this majestic example.

Here's the best photo I have of it from last year.

And in case you are interested, here's one of the one I think is the most interesting tree, possibly that I've ever seen, but certainly in the park.

I have to say, whilst I initially dismissed the notion that trees were being cut down specifically to provide benching for the "promenade" production of Midsummer-night's Dream that's going on in the park this summer, clearly the few trees with Xs on previously would not have been enough to provide the amount of seating space they needed. I am now suspicious that might be the case. If so, it's gross. Who on earth would imagine it would be a good idea to cut down trees to assist a performance of probably the greatest drama set in a magic wood?