For someone like me, who really doesn’t like the cold bareness of winter and who craves the earliest signs of beautiful new life in spring, this really is a strange choice of subject for a photo.
And yet … this tree drew me for not just one photo, when I checked my camera on arriving home from my morning out in the grounds of Bleinhem Palace I had snapped it from more than one angle and on more than one passing.
Judging by the size of its trunk, the tree would have stood as tall and as proud as it’s companions. Whatever happened to it we’ll never know, maybe lightning in a storm or some sort of disease, but now it stands protected by its fellow trees, a shadow of its former self but in its stark appearance still hints at a regal beauty of a former life.
More from before : a wander around “Woodstock” and Blenheim Palace in April 2011.
Photographic Memories 
It looks like it was once a very grand tree.
That’s what I thought too, but I can’t help thinking it’s strangely beautiful as it is now too.
Yes – I agree, it still has a beauty.