In 2007 Plant-lore Archive recceived a note that copper beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea) trees were offered to clergymen to commemorate the 1815 Battle of Waterloo – see Material Collected page.
Over the years no other records of this idea have been received, and no written records found to support it.
Can anyone provide any information?
Also it would be interesting to receive records of old copper beech trees in parsonage, rectory or vicarage gardens. It’s likely that such gardens surround rather fine houses no longer inhabited by clergy and have been sold off by the church, and now known as the ‘Old Rectory’, etc.

Image: planted, St John the Baptist churchyard, Frome, Somerset, May 2015; this tree is believed to have been planted in c.1860, and is now coming to the end of its life (tree no longer extant, June 2022).  Assuming trees planted to commemorate Waterloo were planted several decades earlier it’s unlikely that many survive.

Updated 9 June 2022.