Trees 2025

Trees 2025 started by accident on a perfect Sunday morning in November 2023. Since 1996, I have worked in Armagh, walked these woods, and watched the changing seasons. For over 200 years, these magnificent giant beech trees have watched over astronomers, walkers, runners, lovers, children, and all who frequent the woodland. Their hugeness and solidity reassures and  offers connectedness in an often bewildering world.  That morning in 2023, the light was numinous, and my camera thought so too. These photos, and several like them, ended up in a small photobook called Autumn.  Some would also soon be needed to provide a more tangible memory of these giants. 

In 2024 December, Storm Darragh brought winds of over 130 kph (80 mph). One bough of the massive three-stemmed beech (above-right and below-center) was felled. Depending on the fallen bough as counterweight, its two neighbours had also to be removed.  The impact on the woodland and the skyline was colossal. To the local community, it was a bereavement. The black and white photographs (below) show some of the wreckage of the fallen, and the emptiness remaining.  

These photographs are archive and memory. They reflect the fragility of life ... however solid it appears. They act as a reminder that our climate is changing. Armagh has been recording weather since before the Great Storm of 1839 (the Night of the Big Wind) . From these and other records  it is clear that the intensity of violent storms is increasing. Our giant trees are our oldest trees and none will last forever. Neither can they be replaced overnight.  But we can all do something to reduce the rate and impact of climate change and to ensure that our descendants in 200 years time will have magnificent trees around them. 

The Armagh Observatory and Planetarium has made large-format prints of these photographs to capture the scale of these trees, and their loss. They will be displayed in various buildings around the site, and eventually form part of the AOP archive, so that our successors will have a lasting record of these giants.  

(c)  Simon Jeffery, AOP,  2025 April