Some trees stop you in your tracks before you even know what they are. This huge Monterey cypress at Beauport Park is one of them — not a neat specimen tree in open parkland, but a collapsed, twisted giant half-swallowed by the woodland.

A Lost Giant in Beauport Park Woodland

After finding the dead monumental Monterey cypress nearby, I returned to Beauport Park to look for its companion tree. This second cypress has a very different presence. Instead of one huge upright trunk, it spreads through the woodland like a fallen giant, with massive limbs twisting out from the base and sunlight cutting through the old branches.

It is the kind of tree you would expect to find in an ancient forest, yet its story is more recent and more unusual.

Why Monterey Cypress Trees Are in Beauport Park

Monterey cypress is not native to Sussex. It comes from the coast of California, around the Monterey Peninsula, and was introduced to Britain as an ornamental tree.

Beauport Park was once a landscaped estate, not the overgrown woodland it appears to be today. In the 19th century, landowners planted dramatic exotic trees to impress visitors and shape the parkland. These cypress trees were part of that estate landscape.

Over time, the estate changed. The old parkland became golf course, woodland, holiday park and private grounds. The trees remained, but the landscape grew up around them.

The Forgotten Arboretum of Beauport Park

This part of Beauport now feels like a lost arboretum hidden in the High Weald. The monumental cypress trees are reminders of a time when the estate was actively designed and planted, rather than left to become dense woodland.

The first tree I found was dead but still magnificent, with a vast fluted trunk. This second tree feels more chaotic and alive in form, with limbs spreading out through the wood and the low sun catching the twisted structure.

Photographing a Giant Tree in Low Woodland Light

Trees like this are difficult to photograph because the scale is almost impossible to show in a single frame. A wide-angle lens is needed to include the huge base, twisting limbs and surrounding woodland, but even then the tree can lose its sense of size without a person, rucksack or another object in the scene for scale. The woodland light also creates challenges, especially early in the morning when the tree is still in deep shade. If hand holding the camera, that can mean pushing the ISO higher to keep the shutter speed safe. For this image, the low sun breaking through the branches helped bring the tree to life. A small aperture helped create the sunburst effect, but that also reduces the light reaching the sensor, making exposure another balancing act.

A Tree Worth Recording

What makes these trees special is not just their size, but their survival. They have lived through estate decline, woodland growth, storms, neglect and changing land use.

They are not ancient native trees in the medieval sense, but they are historic estate trees — Victorian giants that have become part of the Beauport landscape.

Finding them so close to home has completely changed the way I see this woodland.

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