Retro: The plane facts about rare tree

David Cliffe • Published 1 Jan 2010 09:00 0 Comments

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THIS 300-year-old print of Montague House was in a rather sorry state when I rescued it a few weeks ago.

It had become folded, worn and torn along the folds. Now back from being repaired, it looks as good as new and will live in a large drawer so it should never have to be folded again.

The print's exact age is not apparent: Imogene Dorey, who wrote an article about the house in volume 4 of The Wokingham Historian, suggests that it dates from the early 18th century.

Nothing is known about the Col Williamson living there at the time, though the drawing from which the print was engraved was the work of a G Williamson - maybe the owner himself. In the caption, Wokingham is spelled 'Oakingham', as was the custom at the time.

The house in Wokingham's Broad Street doesn't look as splendid now as it did when the drawing was made. It has lost the curved gables and oval windows of the single-storey side extensions, it has lost the original door-case, it has gained odd chimneys here and there, and the roofs are hipped rather than flat.

Built by Henry Montague about 1660, the house has had a chequered history. From the 1920s, when the Grosvenor House School for Girls moved in, it has had connections with education.

In 1951 it was sold to Berkshire County Council and the public library moved in in 1970, only to move out again in 1996 when the purpose-built library opened in Denmark Street.

After that the further education college moved in, but sold up in 2004 - it was a listed building and could not easily be modified in line with modern requirements.

In 2007, the Wokingham District Veteran Tree Association "discovered" a very large, old, and unusual species of plane tree next to the supermarket car park, which must once have been in the garden of Montague House.

It was rumoured to be 800 years old, but wasn't, since it is reckoned that the first living specimen of Platanus orientalis didn't arrive in this country until 1562. And there is no such tree in this print!

- UPDATE.

Reader John Wilkins got in touch to point out an error. He said: "I lived in Wokingham in the 1950s and 1960s and was surprised to see a comment that the public library moved into Montague House in 1970. I regularly used the library from about 1955 to 1966 and during that time the Library was in Montague House."

David Cliffe replied: "I'd copied the date 1970 from the article in "The Wokingham Historian" by Imogen Dorey. Obviously, I should have checked in an old directory or phone book as well! Another interesting quibble arises from this print: as a reader pointed out yesterday, it shows that the main body of the house, inside the projecting flanking wings, has six bays. Photographs of Montague House show only five bays!"

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