The 'unarguably great wooden figure'

 

Abergavenny is rightly proud of its greatest treasure. 
It doesn't move, doesn't glitter; it cannot breathe, has no digital identity.

But it does provide a very tactile and essential root that connects us with our disappearing cultural heritage. Sadly the branches of the Jesse Tree were savaged during our terrible Cultural Revolution, when so much was destroyed.

Shot With Spirit-1097 But the ancestral, recumbent Root of Jesse figure remains, carved brilliantly from a single oak trunk. It needs to be gazed upon, walked around; the many details appreciated. Conjuring its original splendour requires a leap, as Andrew Graham-Dixon says: "to imagine the complete Tree spreading upwards 25 feet or more from the shoot below Jesse’s breast, all brilliantly coloured, takes the breath away." (History Today)