THE drone of chainsaws heralded the last moments of Kent County Cricket Club's world-renowned lime as tree surgeons set to work removing the downed 190-year-old icon.

Eastry-based specialist Mark Jones was the man tasked with salvaging what he could in terms of workable timber from the ancient lime that fell to the storms of Friday, January 7.

The oldest inhabitant of St Lawrence yielded over 10 tonnes of timber, but sadly much of that was found to be rotten, wet and full of fungal infection.

During a break in the clear-up work Mr Jones said: "I actually feel very sad. There's a lot of history in this tree and people have been visiting the site to say their last farewells.

"For a tree that's of no value commercially its quite astounding how much attention this job has attracted. We're told that it was even covered on Australian television the day after it blew down."

The club has taken a good number of cuttings from the tree and hope to graft dozens of other branches onto lime stocks in a bid to offer members their very own 'son of lime' specimen to take home later this summer.

The timber that can be salvaged will be seasoned in due course, but Mr Jones believes it will be months rather than weeks before supporters will be able to purchase their own slice of Kent cricketing history.

"Commercially the tree is worth nothing, but because of the inherent value to cricket fans we're trying to salvage as much useable timber as possible," added Mr Jones.

"The club may be able to use that to produce souvenirs like bails, stumps and key-fobs.

"We need to mill the wood, dry it and then see how much timber remains for turning purposes.

"Unfortunately the decay in the main trunk was quite pronounced and all that timber was worthless.

"The tree has been declining for a number of years and although it would have been an interesting job to take it down without damaging the outfield but its perhaps best this way that nature took the decision out of our hands."

Kent have confirmed that the lime will be replaced and are planning a transplant ceremony for March, in the meantime, all efforts will be made to remove the stump pretty much intact.