From Hedgerow to Narnia: The Startop Farm Maple Takes the Spotlight in The Magician’s Nephew

Sometimes Narnia news comes from a cast list. Sometimes it comes from a tree.

Last September, a team from Shepperton Studios dismantled a distinctive dead maple at Startop Farm near Marsworth. Locals knew it for its lightning-scarred shape. The branches were numbered so it could be rebuilt later, though nobody publicly knew yet what production it was for.

Now we do. The tree is headed for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew.

According to farm owner Josie, the maple will appear as one of two apple trees, specifically the one on the left side of the screen.

That detail matters because the apple tree in The Magician’s Nephew matters a great deal.

Where it might appear

One early guess in the reporting was the Wood Between the Worlds. That is possible at a glance, but readers of the book will remember that the key apple tree does not grow there. The Wood is full of pools and trees, but it is not an orchard.

That makes it just as likely, maybe more likely, that this maple is being used for the garden sequence in Narnia itself, where Digory retrieves the apple that later becomes the Tree of Protection.

Why that matters

If that is where the tree appears, it is not just background decoration. The apple Digory brings back shapes the safety of Narnia for years to come. So a single tree carries a lot of weight in this story.

There is also something fitting about the choice itself. Josie said, “The tree has been here forever; it just died and continued to stand there. It was spotted by a member of the production team at our steam rally in June.”

A dead tree that kept standing, then got rebuilt for a story about creation and renewal, is the kind of detail Narnia readers are going to notice.

A good sign for the production

In a film world that could easily fake almost anything, it is interesting that the production bothered to move and rebuild a real tree instead. That suggests a care for physical detail that is encouraging to see.

For people near Marsworth, it is a fun local story. For the rest of us, it is one more small glimpse of how this adaptation is being put together.