By Edd Wheeler
Being a Shepperton resident for over 74 years I have seen many changes to my surroundings.
My journey to permanently living in Shepperton began in Italy. I was born in Rome in 1947 of mixed parentage. My mother was a Rus-sian refugee who fled to the West during the war. My father was serving in an Allied repatriation camp in Italy after the WW2 had ended. That is where they met. As a family, we arrived in England in 1948. Under the Labour Govern-ment’s Housing Act to provide affordable social housing to rent, we moved to a council house in Shepperton. Before the inaugu-ration of the now Spelthorne Council, the borough was managed by Sunbury Urban District Council which was later dissolved. Two council estates were built in Shepperton between 1946 and 1948, labelled by residents living in each estate as the ‘Rainbow Estate’ (so named as each house’s total brick-work was painted in a different colour and strictly maintained by the Council) and the other as ‘Tin Town’. The former was tradition-ally brick built using some of the salvaged material from bomb-destroyed buildings in London. The latter was using a new concept of prefabrication using outer steel panels. Both building developments used tin roofing that is still surviving the perils of our inclem-ent weather.
I grew up at my home in Jessiman Terrace, which is located on the southern end of the ‘Rainbow Estate’. When I was six, a local celebration was held on the 2nd of June 1953 to mark Queen Elizabeth 2’s accession to the throne with her coronation. It was fortunate that one of the residents had rented a small television from the then Radio Rentals Com-pany. With over ten families crowded into one room, we watched this glorious spectacle in monochrome. After this event, we all spilled out onto the green to join the rest of the residents for a street party.
To mark the Queen’s Corona-tion the council planted a sapling coniferous tree on the green a week later.
I now arrive at the bone of contention! This ‘Coronation’ Cedar Tree, had, until recently, survived 69 years and had nearly as many growth rings as I have in years. Sadly, a few local residents felt that this tree had outgrown its location and had become dangerous. Without a preser-vation order on it (unlike the similar sized tree located in Shepperton High Street which is known locally as the Big Tree), our own spec-imen was doomed. All that is left after the decision by the Spelthorne Council’s Tree Officer and based on an independent report, is the shredded tree bark and sawdust. intermin-gled with grass. As this landmark local herit-age tree has now met its demise, my opinion is that proper documentation and reports should have been lodged with Spelthorne Council, as with other planning issues. Shepperton Residents could then have aired their views in a democratic way and an alter-native solution could have been found such as removing damaged branches and possibly placing a ring safety fence around it.
The image that you see is my son Paul who is 5 feet 8 inches trying to measure the girth of this tree which was 110 inches.
Please note the comments raised in this article are a caveat to other potential tree issues faced by residents of Shepperton and the wider Borough of Spelthorne. Don’t assume that trees will always be there. They need tree preservation orders on them to protect them for future generations.