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CORNISH TREES
Did we mention we’re from the South West of this fair isle, Cornwall mostly? No? Well, we are which is good news for us and our clients because it’s a bit special down here. It’s not like everywhere else and it’s been shaping us since we were born. Pretty much wherever you look there’s a tor on a moor with a bunch of mystical standing stones around it that reminds us this was, and still is, a land of rough magic and windswept drama (and we’re not talking about Poldark).
We’re geographically isolated, part of the Celtic tradition, with rum swilling pirates and smugglers for ancestors. Cornwall is captivating and compelling, just like our designs. And it has a wild gleam in its eye, just like us. A brief and fairly accurate history of Cornwall: The Romans fancied setting up some beach resorts down here, so tried colonising us, but didn’t do very well so gave up and left. Then King Arthur, who was Cornish lest we forget, and his mate Merlin took over most of England, mostly because he was Cornish and thought it was a good idea. Next the Saxons came and had a go but weren’t tough enough so King Stanley (genuinely, England’s first king, look it up) decided to rope off Cornwall at the Tamar river, noting:”They’re a bit wild down there, let’s leave them to it.” And he wasn’t wrong. Cornwall is an island within an island, sea-clad and ravaged by tempestuous elements relentlessly bashing our mighty cliffs to bits. They batter anything standing up, including us.
It’s always windy here. Nature is always knocking at the window asking for a quick run about the place. Our hair is tousled. And just look at our trees. Cornish trees don’t grow upwards, they grow sideways. We all love trees, upright ones included. There’s nothing quite like the sight of a mighty oak standing proud on the boundary of a cricket pitch in a bucolic Surrey village. Nothing, that is, other than a wiry hawthorn bent sideways on a clifftop in Cornwall, existing within the wind, literally living on the edge. That’s our favourite tree. We see rare and wild beauty in its design and that’s what we focus on at Yeo.
Anybody can have a standard oak, give us a hardcore Cornish hawthorn every time.
