Sir – I read with great interest Reg Little's piece on Boars Hill and the ‘Signal Elm’ (March 5), and I can’t help wondering whether the tree illustrating the article really was the Signal Elm.

The tree pictured is an oak, certainly of some age, although a century-and-a-half ago in Matthew Arnold’s time it might have been less substantial.

However, so far as I recall, the Signal Elm stood somewhere on the ridge to the north-west of Chilswell path. I have a vague recollection of my father pointing it out to me on our walks over the hill in the 1930s.

He was a printer and used to make blocks from lino-cuts. One of his particular favourites was of the Signal Elm, while another was of Chilswell Barn. I always assumed the barn to have been in the vicinity of Arnold's elm, but maybe I’m wrong. Whatever, I believe the Signal Elm actually was an elm, and likely to have been an ageing but tall specimen 70-odd years ago.

Chilswell barn may have gone, and the elms on the ridge have certainly disappeared — victims of Dutch Elm disease three or four decades ago.

It would be nice to hear from any of your readers whose memories of the Chilswell ridge years ago are perhaps less coloured by time than are mine.

Jim Tallett Headington