Sorry, but there are so many flowering cherries. Without seeing the flowers, it's difficult to ID it.

I think the question really is - do you like it? If so, think 'outside the box' and plan around it. There's no reason why it couldn't be the central feature of a larger flower bed, is there? Unless you want to grow veggies there....

Or how about a circular tree seat around the base...somewhere shady to sit in the summer.

Or a clematis to scramble through it and give flowers in the summer. I can recommend 'Marie Boisselet' for doing just that

Thanks everyone above for this help to date which has given me much food for thought!

- SpritzH: sorry I find I don't have an archive picture of the tree in flower that would be close enough from which to ID it. Do you think it IS a "flowering cherry" of some sort? And to answer your question, yes I do like it (quite); but for the sake of the week or so each end of the season when it looks spectacular (which is why I took the - very bad - photos this week), it seems to be taking up too prominent a place in my 'garden theatre' (!) (a bit like a previous garden's lilac, which I can never understand why people prize so much: a week of big flowers miles off the ground so people who could smell them, can't - and then a whole season of horrid brown dead flowers far too high up to deadhead! - coupled with boring leaves below, and maybe lots of suckers!) ... Jaundiced view, I know (my sense of smell is alas, poor!)

- Volunteer: the seat sounds a v. good idea and would certainly make a focal point (though I don't think I ought to be encouraged to laze in the garden, I do too much of that already!) but it IS a very steep slope the tree's set in, so I guess it would have to be a pricey custom-made job (I'll start being extra-nice to local carpenters!...)

- Andrewr: like the clematis idea also, and the one you suggest looks very pretty...especially as it seems it would tolerate the partial shade of the tree?

MMM... meanwhile I'd better get back to finishing sowing my autumn broad beans...
thanks again, folks! (PS: contrary to speculation the funny little blue-doored building is NOT the house's outside loo (as my family insist)! - it's the well-house, essential for the potager in our hot summers!

I do agree about Lilac - especially white ones! Yes, I do think it's a Cherry, and as you like it (I would too....) then plan around it. Gardening on a slope isn't too much of a challenge really. Unless it's the side of a mountain, that is! ;-)

SpritzH well they call them mountains here ('les montagnes du Limousin') and after the flats of East Anglia my owld knees tend to agree... but hey, you can always plant a nearby gardening fork, and hope it'll rescue you to get up off that unfortunate stumble....

Ah well, it was just a thought.