Is my tree diseased...?

[Wooterus]

I am a complete gardening noob (lived in flats for years but bought a house with garden about a year ago). Have a tree in our garden which I think is some variety of cherry? But I think it has some kind of disease

The leaves still grow in spring and stay through summer, and it did get a minimal amount of pale pink blossom in spring, but all of the branches are covered in these weird knobbly growths, many of which are covered in a black/mouldy flaky stuff. When I did a bumper batch of weeding this week I uncovered the trunk (which is sort of within a hedge and so not very easy to see) and there's a huge knobbly patch covered in the same black ashy mouldy stuff (This is the first pic, sorry not very distinct, but hard to photograph.)

Have attached some pics - are there any gardeners out there who might be able to tell me what this is and how to get rid of it (if I need to...?)

Thanks!

If you google "cherry tree canker", I think you'll find your answer, but whether it's worth trying to treat it is a question only you can answer. It looks as though it would be better to remove the tree, but that might not be an easy option for you.

Thanks Nan - had a look at some photos and it looks slightly different to the canker, but one site did lead me to look at black knot disease, which looks more like it. Trouble is, the treatment is cutting back the affected branches...which is all of them, including the trunk!

So we may have to look at removing it if it can't be treated, as it seems it will gradually just die. Sad news

Might there be any point in giving it a serious pruning in the winter and then attempting to treat the rest with fungicide...?