The awe-inspiring 160-year-old redwood, adorned with more than 3,200 feet of twinkling lights, soars nearly 140-feet from the forest floor. Its 2,000 low-energy bulbs have turned the tree – the height of ten double-decker buses stacked on top of each other – into the UK’s biggest Christmas tree.
The wondrous spectacle is greeting visitors to one of the National Trust’s best-loved stately homes this winter.
The tree, at Cragside in Northumberland, was selected for decoration due to its otherworldly position next to a 19th-century mansion atop a rocky outcrop surrounded by forest.
Curator Clara Woolford explains: “Our forestry team are expert tree climbers and used a cherry-picker to reach the top.
“They were untangling the lights – which are powered by a rechargeable battery powered generator – in big strands, with some of us on the ground going, ‘Left a bit, right a bit’, like any family.”
The tallest Christmas tree is one of seven million shrubs and trees planted at the 1,000-acre estate by Victorian visionary Lord William Armstrong and his wife, Margaret. Lord Armstrong was a solicitor and self-taught engineer responsible for devising the hydraulic mechanism that operates London’s Tower Bridge.
“We really hope the Armstrongs would have loved this industrial scale eco-light hanging, but I feel it is just the kind of madcap idea they would have approved of,” Clara continues.
That’s because at Cragside, the story of electricity goes much deeper than Christmas frosting, and into rich layers of history beneath. “Cragside House was the original smart home,” says Clara, 34. “It was the first place in the world that generated hydro-electricity – even before Niagara Falls.”
Married in 1835, the couple had commissioned their dream home from era-defining architect and Royal Academician, Richard Norman Shaw.
As well as having the novelty of an electric lighting system, the pioneering hydro-electric system – drawing power from the nearby river – enabled Cragside to have a hydraulic lift and even a water-powered spit.
The UK’s Tallest Living Christmas Tree dressed in more 2,000 lights (Image: National Trust Images/Sheila Rayson.)
Artist’s impression of the UK’s tallest Christmas tree (Image: National Trust)
There was central heating and a plunge bath. It was a house that truly set the standard for modern living.
“As the self-taught owner of an engineering plant, Lord Armstrong was seriously interested in what he called ‘the coal question,’” says Clara. The industrial revolution was in full swing but Lord Armstrong knew coal was both a polluting and diminishing resource.
The innovative thinker gave a lecture about what would happen when coal ran out and the need to look at alternative electricity sources. He even posited the idea of extracting energy from the sun, aware it was a resource that could be exploited.
But although the house took 25 years to build, the trees are taking rather longer. For although many of the specimens in the nationally important collection are already the tallest of their kind in the UK, they are still growing. And they are Lilliputian compared to their North American counterparts, which can reach heights of 380 feet – the equivalent height of more than 25 double-decker buses stacked aloft.
“Seeing these trees mature was a vision the Armstrongs were destined never to enjoy in their own lifetimes,” says Clara.
“The specimens at Cragside were all planted as young saplings – tiny immature trees – and some were even grown from seed.” Devising a strategy for garlanding the soaring specimen was a novel task for 2024 that fell to head forester Chris Clues, 47, who helped afix more than 30, 108-ft long swags of lights to the graceful branches.
“There has been a lot of planning involved and we’ve been working out the challenges as we’ve gone along,” says Chris, who has worked at Cragside for 20 years and been head forester for the past 11.
“We chose this tree because it has a very triangular Christmas tree shape.
“It is also close to the house. I am sure that if Lord Armstrong was going to light a tree, he would have chosen this one, right on his driveway.”
Lady Armstrong was a very keen botanist, as well as a philanthropist. Says Clara: “We are lucky to have her annotated plant books which reveal that she was definitely following a fashion.” It was a trend known as “the North American style” where the planting of giant trees was designed to rise airily above elaborately-planted undergrowth, featuring rhododendrons and alpines.
The iron bridge over the Debdon Burn illuminated for Christmas at Cragside (Image: National Trust/Steve Howard)
The undoubted stars of the show are the non-native trees the couple collected from North America, including Redwoods and Douglas Firs.
For the Victorians, keeping up with the neighbours was all about plants. “Lord Armstrong saw a lot of these trees on his travels, thinking ‘What tree have you got that I haven’t got?’
“Now, rather than tree envy, it tends to be which car or which boat,” laughs Chris, who manages a team of three, responsible for managing all the trees at the estate.
This huge brief includes annual checks on each tree to check it for pests and disease – sadly increasing as the climate warms – as well as ensuring that stray limbs are removed in a timely fashion.
“If we weren’t open to the public, it wouldn’t matter if a branch fell off,” he explains, adding that the warmer climate in the UK leads fir trees to grow differently than in their native lands.
“We don’t have the snowfall here, so the trees adapt, and end up with slightly longer branches.”
The Armstrongs took the creation of their fantasy landscape and “tree envy” to the next level.
This included dynamiting their valley and instructing individual rocks to be placed in positions where they would create the most dramatic river cascades. “Their friend John Hancock, a taxidermist, would stand in the river directing operations. There was a lot of Victorian chutzpah involved,” says Clara.
The epic Christmas tree plan is a similarly expressive concept that would have fitted very well with the visionary zeal that was typical of Cragside’s custodians.
“Lord Armstrong would definitely have approved of the idea,” adds Chris. “If the technology had been around in his day, it is just the sort of idea he would have had.”
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The historic hydro system he pioneered was still active until the house was requisitioned in the Second World War, when the Army put it onto the national grid.
“However, we do have a modern Archimedes screw which generates hydro-electricity for the house by harnessing the power of falling water,” says Clara.
And at Cragside this Christmas, it is not just the country’s tallest living Christmas tree that is turning heads.
The interior of the Armstrongs’ house has been transformed into a forest landscape with natural items sourced from the gardens and forest.
The intended effect is as if the house were being overtaken by trees.
“There are saplings bursting out of Christmas dinner in the grand dining room,” adds Clara.
“There is a full-scale river and cave in the neo-classical drawing room, with its ten-tonne marble fireplace.
“We have tried as much as possible to source everything we are using from the 1,000-acre estate, including flowers that the gardeners have been drying for months.
“It’s an ambition we’ve had for a while. But seeing it made real feels magical.”