After Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar, it is believed that Charles Douglas, 6th Marquess of Queensberry – a friend of Nelson's mistress, Emma Hamilton – planted clumps of beech trees on his Amesbury Abbey estate to commemorate him, as part of an expansion of the parkland to the north and west of the house.

[1] Each clump represented the location of a British or French ship at a particular point in the battle.

Around 2005, several clumps were replanted by local volunteers,[3] each with about 200 mixed trees including beech, maple and hawthorn.

The UK National Maritime Museum has also suggested that the link between the Battle of the Nile and the clumps is "quite likely".

Several of the remaining clumps stand on land owned by the National Trust's Stonehenge Landscape property.