It's a Chilean pine or Monkey-puzzle, Araucaria araucana.

A striking tree, in more ways than one--mature ones grow 10 pound "pine cones" that fall like bowling balls! Normally not a problem for the first 20 years or so, but keep paths and benches away after that!

Wow Tug, I've never seen any like that here!

Castle Kennedy up in Galloway Scotland have 'walks'
the Arucaria walk is stunning all year tound as are the Azalea walk and Rhododendron walk in season the Cordyline walk was decimated by the big freeze of 2010

its sad to see them in the tiny front gardens......

I think they look like aliens in UK gardens -just "not right" somehow but each to his own.

Sorry Stera, but we have one of these in the front garden, mind you the garden is quite big. This year and last it had the 'cone' bits, but these fall apart before they fall to the ground. The only other on in the area is quite a way down the road, so...does anyone know if these are self-fertile and whether all the hundreds of seed bits from the cones would be fertile?

Many pines need fire for the seeds to germinate.

Don't say sorry Honeysuckle - its just me, loads of people love them. Probably shouldn't have mentioned it.

Maybe I'm thinking of the Norfolk Island Pine, a quite different species, and not frost hardy!

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It's definitely not Norfolk Island Pine. That has horizontal branches. I think Landgirll100 is correct. It's a Monkey Puzzle Tree.

Sorry, Bathgate--I didn't mean to imply that the tree pictured was a Norfolk Island Pine, just that I thought the entire genus had similar cones. Making too many assumptions, again! :/
I just finished some research on this genus, and it seems that my info is at least partly apocryphal. Normally, my source--the Sunset Western Garden Book--is pretty reliable, but it seems that the cones of the members of this genus all disintegrate when mature to release the seeds. Apparently when whole cones drop, it is because they are damaged and drop while still unripe.

That's interesting. In researching this, I was amazed to find out that some cones are coated in wax and could lay around for decades waiting for fire to melt the wax so the seeds can germinate. Even fire plays an important role - it clears the land and triggers new life.

Tugbrethil - you may be thinking of the Bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii).
Unfortunately someone in the US recently had a very bad experience with a cone from it.
See:
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/16-Pound-Seed-Pod-Falls-From-Tree-in-San-Francisco-Crushes-Navy-Vets-Skull-331388132.html

Re. Araucaria araucana trees - I have visited avenues of them in the UK and Ireland. My favourite avenue in the UK is the entry road at Bicton College in Devon (just turn off the main road and go through the arched gatehouse and you are there).

I've seen a Araucaria araucana in the grove at Kew Gardens that has both male and female cones.
There is also an amazing picture of what seems to be a unique fastigiate(!) specimen of Araucaria araucana at the (almost) bottom right of the British Conifer Society facebook page (just google it - you don't need to be facebook registered to view it). The pic is one of the ones dated 23 March 2014.

Oh dear. I've walked up the avenue at Bicton and never noticed them...