When Dr. Reg Murphy, archaeologist and Curator Nelson's Dockyard Museum, invited to Tot Club to cut down a tree we had no idea of the scale of the task. Felling a tree, almost regardless of size, is an hour's work at the most. Taking a slice out of the trunk at the base, standing back and hoping the tree is going to fall away from you and not on top of you and that's it. Not this tree.
Firstly, it was growing, around, over and through a large stone wall. Because of the nature of the tree, it had several dozen trunks and upward of 50 branches. It was necessary to firstly climb on the walls to lop off the ends of branches within reach then cut off more from a ladder and, ultimately, climb into the tree to remove the majority of the branches. Everything then had to be lopped into manageable sizes and dragged away.
The photos below show the various stages of 'demolition' over a period of 5 weeks. During this period a number of people contributed to the tree's 'downfall' - Graham Applin, Terry Bowen, Michael Briggs, Peter Carey, Len Davidson, John Duffy, Mark & Lindsay Kiessling and Justin Sutherland. See more.
