Whipsnade Tree Cathedral was created in faith, hope and reconciliation by Edmund Kell Blyth (1898-1969) as a memorial to three of his comrades from the First World War. His friends Arthur Bailey and John Bennett were killed in action in 1918, and Francis Holland later died in a car crash in 1930. After leaving the Army in 1922 and joining the family firm of solicitors in the City of London, Blyth made his home in Whipsnade, an area that he loved. He converted a pair of old cottages into holiday homes for poor London families in memory of his friends, and in 1930 was further inspired to create the Tree Cathedral after a visit with his wife to Liverpool Anglican Cathedral which was then under construction. In the account he later wrote, he recalls how on the drive home through the Cotswold hills, ‘I saw the evening sun light up a coppice of trees on the side of the hill. It occurred to me then that here was something more beautiful still and the idea formed of building a cathedral with trees’. With the help of Albert Bransom (1872-1940), he started planting in 1932 and over the next seven years created the memorial which follows the plan of a medieval cathedral.
The nave was the first element to be planted using poplars at 10ft intervals to give a pillar effect. In 1933 Blyth’s wife suggested that he plant two chapels to fill in the corners between the nave and transepts which became the Easter Chapel and Winter (now known as Christmas) Chapel. The latter was planned in the shape of a star with a tree in the middle. In 1935 Blyth enlarged the Tree Cathedral and turned its transepts into the present nave using Lombardy poplars again for the pillar effect with laurel for walls. He chose silver birch, called by Coleridge ‘the lady of the woods’, to represent the High Altar in the chancel because of its gracefulness. The original nave became the transepts, and the Summer and Autumn Chapels were added. In 1938 Blyth invited Mr Smith, the third generation of dew pond builders who had recently built a dew pond in Whipsnade Park, to construct one adjacent to the Tree Cathedral. This became the centre of the cloister walk. In planning this extension he found three dells in the field that had been produced many years earlier by farmers digging out chalk to lime the fields. They became the corners of the cloister walk and were surrounded by trees to indicate towers. Around the same time, the nave was extended with limes to intersect the last section of the cloister walk. A fourth dell was also surrounded by trees to create a tower which has a larger diameter in order to incorporate an existing oak. This became known as the Gospel Oak, recalling the preaching of early Christian missionaries under the trees. Next to this tower Blyth created a grand entrance, and finally he placed a Lady Chapel in the triangular space between the cloister, nave and entrance.
The Tree Cathedral had just been completed in 1939 when the outbreak of the Second World War stopped all work and maintenance for the next eight years. The plantation became colonised by thorn and other self-sown trees. It was cleared during the late 1940s and early 1950s by Blyth and Gerald Wallsam, whose help is commemorated in the name Wallsam Way, the passage between the dew pond shrubbery and Christmas Chapel. In 1960 the site was given to the National Trust by Blyth’s youngest son Tom who is commemorated by an avenue of hornbeams leading to the south entrance. The Tree Cathedral has never been consecrated but its spiritual aims have been summed up by Edmund Blyth thus: ‘The Tree Cathedral has the shape of a traditional medieval cathedral, but formed of trees. Although it contains beautiful areas, that is not its primary significance, and nor is it a garden. It is managed to emphasise the vigour and balance of individual plants, in patterns that create an enclosure for worship and meditation, offering heightened awareness of God’s presence and transcendence.’