During the Malvern Festival of 1936, George Bernard Shaw planted a mulberry tree in Priory Park to commemorate his 80^thbirthday. At the planting ceremony he said that he hoped the tree would outlive him. Shaw died in 1950 aged 94 years and the tree was blown over in a storm during the winter of the year 2000, aged just 66. The memorial to Shaw was thus lost forever, or so it was assumed. Dreadful storms had completely uprooted the tree and within hours Council workmen had sawn it into pieces. One huge slice of trunk was rescued and donated by Bruce Osborne and Cora Weaver to Malvern Museum as a reminder of Malvern's theatrical heritage. The growth rings faithfully record the history of the tree and its passage through such epics as World War II.

Research by Friends of Malvern Springs and Wells however revealed that in 1959 a cutting from the original tree was sent to Malvern in Victoria, Australia. It arrived in a poorly state but further investigation identified where the cutting was planted - and that it is now a massive, healthy tree which continues to thrive. A project was launched by the Friends of Malvern Springs and Wells to return a cutting to Great Malvern, England, made possible with the sponsorship of Coca-Cola then bottlers of Malvern Water from the Malvern Hills, and the City of Stonnington, Australia. Via Heathrow, six healthy cuttings arrived in Malvern, Worcestershire from Malvern, Australia on Friday 14 August 2009.

When George Bernard Shaw planted the first generation Mulberry Tree in Priory Park alongside the Mulberry Spring in 1936, he used a spade that appears in several photographs. We have been seeking a similar famous spade for the replanting.  As a result of her research, Cora learned that a spade known as the 'Elgar Spade' survived. The composer had planted a mulberry tree at Battenhall in Worcester in March 1931 with it. Shaw and Elgar were friends. Cora secured this spade for Friends of Malvern Springs and Wells who then donated it to Malvern Museum. So, when the time came it was the Elgar Spade which was used when the Friends of Malvern Springs & Wells unveiled the third generation Shaw Mulberry Tree in Priory Park. 

The six original cuttings all survived. The largest by 2013 was about 8 feet tall and the anticipated growth they achieved in 2013 suggested that they were ready for transplanting. The best two trees went to Priory Park, Malvern, to establish themselves before the planned unveiling. 

Picture right - the Elgar spade in Malvern Museum used for the unveiling.

 

Wendy Hiller the actress stars in Shaw's play Pygmalion, later to be turned into a movie My Fair Lady.

   

   

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the 1950s. she later went on to unveil a plaque to Shaw at the Mulberry Tree in Priory Park, Great Malvern.

 

 

 

  

 

 

Unveiling Events Day Saturday  25 June 2016  

 

 

 

by Myfanwy Fox

Written for the unveiling 2016.

Common threads run through lives, through history.

Culture, memes, ideas weave through time

like silk worms' strands wefted into tapestry

or prosaic language dancing into rhyme.

Some card, some spin, some dye their world in drab

or vivid hues foregrounding spring-born rills

or clouds or clods or falling leaves, those slabs

of granite quarried from the Malvern Hills.

As moths eclose, so unexpected yet

ordained, creativity is a seed

within each generation: nurture it

because it's what our future hopes will need

to find answers in a world as yet unknown;

sure, wind their silk, but let them fly, full grown.