This reminds me of the scoffing that goes on at those folk who talk to their plants. They may be slightly crackers in thinking that their plants have an intelligence like us and can understand what we are saying, but what the scoffers fail to recognize is that such folk care about their plants and are expressing a feeling for them - the modern word is `empathy’. People who care about their plants are therefore more likely to have happier plants than those who do not talk to them, that’s all.

Even at a distance and solely on the evidence within the question, it is a pretty safe conclusion that the soil under these roses is extremely low in organic content. A further consequence of this is that the supply of the minor and trace elements is depleted.

In this case, and others like it, the cutting out of several old stems at once would have been better done gradually, one or two each year, to avoid too violent a shock.

To remove any more of the remaining old growth by pruning this spring could very well prove disastrous because the rising sap would have little or nowhere to go, and as old as the rootstock is, it would have to find an outlet for itself by putting up suckers.

You really must correct the high acidity of your soil - a test kit is inexpensive and easy to use - and put down lime or ground chalk as indicated. The soil under your roses is like your bank balance: if you make more withdrawals than deposits, the day comes when you cannot pay for anything, and the soil won’t grow any more roses.

Complainants often protest that they have to hoe frequently to prevent the competition of weeds and moss - second clue, for it is evident that we are dealing with deteriorating soil fertility and structure. Repeated demands on the same plant nutrients by the same crop being grown repeatedly in the same position is of course a widely recognized cause of ’soil sickness’, as is build-up of pest populations and diseases specific to the crop in question. The condition we are discussing here is frequently put down to ‘rose sickness’.