LETTERS

CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS Monkey puzzle trees I was astonished to read in Viv Hobbs’s letter [FT451:65] that South Wales pit manager’s houses all had monkey puzzle trees in their front gardens. My grandfather James Starkey was the Deputy (Manager) at Amington Pit in the 1910s–1920s in the Staffordshire coalfield (100 miles from the Rhondda), and in his front garden at 8 The Green, Amington, was – and is still – a monkey puzzle tree. The house is even called ‘Fir Tree House’ (a yokel’s mis-identification). This exotic tree looks completely anomalous in what was a basic pit village – can this really be an extraordinary coincidence? It would be important for the Pit…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 454

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