EVER GREEN PURPLE AND WHITE

 

In the early 1900’s an arboretum was planted in Batheaston at the home of Col Linley and Mary Blathwayt.  When suffragettes were released from prison they were welcomed there to recuperate.  They were also invited to plant a tree as a mark of their courage.  Fourty six trees were planted with ceremony and photographed.  They survived until the 1960’s when they were felled in order to make way for a housing estate.

Only one tree survived.  It was a Monterey Pine and had been planted by Mary Lamartine Yates in 1909.

 

In 2020 I was staying in Batheaston and came across the story and managed to find the site of ‘the last tree’.  As an artist I was compelled to explore ways of reviving this story.  Through the making of artworks I am exploring the physicality of the tree (eg pine cones, needles, bark, sap) and its metaphoric value.  At over 30 feet high Rose’s tree is monumental.  Unlike grey stone statues to ‘great men’ this tree has a power that is regenerative.

 

Initially I worked to harvest seeds and grow them.  Seedlings emerged on my kitchen window ledge.  As they grew, I documented all the key moments in photography and video.  They thrived and became hardy enough to live outside.  I wanted the legacy of Rose’s tree to be renewed.  I grew eight trees and began to think of them as living monuments and how they could rebirth a wealth of stories.

 

The tree guardian is an octogenarian retired midwife.  How fitting that she should be the custodian of such a tree. 

 

The suffragettes were midwives to the achievement of one thing:  the vote.  This recognition of women as equals in deciding their futures - through democracy - was as radical as they come.  If you imagine a history of thousands of years in our islands where women were not allowed to vote or have agency in their lives it beggars belief and so to change this single part of our civic life was monumental.  The tree is now also monumental.  It towers above the entire estate and recognizes the labours of women who had dared to demand change and were often imprisoned, brutalised and raped for their audacity.   

R. Bishop

 

An exceptional part of this story is that Colonel Linley Blathwayt (who lived at Eagle House where the trees were planted) was a keen photographer.  All the women, their trees and planting ceremonies were recorded in a stunning collection of photographs. 

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