As he grew older sawing wood and pruning and clipping in the garden was Shaw's main form of exercise.
He made bonfires, collected acorns and was deeply involved in his garden with notebook, camera and secateurs and appeared 'like a magic gardener in a fairy story'.
Edith Reeves, a neighbour, commented that 'the villagers all thought he was a rum one, a very rum one..and it was not until 1915 during the terrible Hertfordshire blizzard, that the village in general got to know him more closely. He came out and worked hard with the other menfolk for days on end, sawing up trees which had been torn up by their roots and lay blocking the road.'
During the war his wife Charlotte wrote to Nancy Astor:
'G.B.S. is like a lion, he has taken to lopping and pruning trees. I wish you could see him when he comes in from the woods - dripping and smiling.'
He would work in his hut until he was summoned for lunch by the ringing of a loud handbell. He slept for an hour after lunch and would then 'go about the lanes and woods with a secateur and a little saw and clear up overgrown paths'.
Shaw was a fit man and even in his mid-eighties would go for walks for up to six miles. Ultimately, though, his passion for pruning meant that he over-stretched himself: it was while climbing one of the fruit trees in the garden to cut off an overhanging branch that he fell out, broke a thigh bone and had to be taken to the local hospital. He died two months later on November 2 1950 aged 94.
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