WESTONBIRT Arboretum, which in the days of yore was merely a local curiosity, a place of solitary mystery, seems to have morphed into a corporate business opportunity.

A cafe has been added, a concrete and regulated parking area, a gift shop selling quaint items you probably don’t need, a visitors reception centre and a rank of ticket barriers of the type you normally see at Paddington station. 

Now, the underside of great trees are lit with powerful lights and with dubious hues as soon as it gets dark.

The noble stand of beeches near the entrance resembles nothing as much as a giant pantomime set from the second act of Jack and the Beanstalk.

By degrees, however glacial, the Arboretum has come to resemble a thing much distanced from its original dignified purpose.

It would have been a person of the dullest comprehension who failed to sense the very real presence of nature’s spirits within those forest glades and thickets of old.

How depressing to think that even now there is somewhere a snake-oil salesman dreaming up a hall of mirrors or similar fairground attraction to add to those existing.

PAUL DOWNEY
Tetbury