Do you know how tall this Christmas tree is?
I often find the gigantic Christmas tree at Selwood Pump Sales & Manufacturing on Bournemouth Road fascinating.
Old residents in Chandler’s Ford told me that Selwood dresses up the most stunning (and possibly the tallest) Christmas tree every year in Chandler’s Ford.
Do you know when the first tree was erected at Selwood?
Peter Manley from Selwood told me that the company’s first tree was erected in 1953 and there has been a tree outside Selwood’s Chandler’s Ford offices every year since.
The tree is approximately 40 feet tall and originally might have come from Norway.
Peter Manley said, “However, for the last eighteen years we have chosen the tree at Longleat where we go to Longleat, inspect the trees and choose the top of one that is then cut off later for us to collect.”
The tree is usually positioned the last Friday in November and dressed with the lights that weekend by the same company that erect the lights in Eastleigh.
An access platform is used to dress the tree with the lights and star. The lights are periodically changed and kept up to date.
Peter also sent me two pictures to share with Chandler’s Ford readers. One shows their Christmas tree erected this year, and another in the 1960s.
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Selwoods Christmas tree represented a bright spot (pun intended) in the life of Chandler’s Ford.
I have somewhere (and will try and find it) a colour slide of the tree taken around 1961/2 when I was about 12/13. I had saved my pocket money and bought an Halena camera and one of the first pictures I ever took with it, and certainly the first night shot, was of the Selwood tree.
I remember balancing the camera on the concrete wall on the corner of Chalvington Road.
I always have a smile whenever I pass Selwood’s and think of the tree.