Witch Tree, Maiden Tree

This week, public outrage greeted the news that two men have been found guilty of cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree beside Hadrian’s Wall.

Though obviously a cultural icon, sycamores are not native to Britain. The tree came from Europe and only arrived in Britain around the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The idea that Robin Hood passed it on his way from Dover to Nottinghamshire is charming Hollywood nonsense. In the oak woods beneath Roseberry Topping, sycamore is labelled invasive. It spreads fast, thanks to its winged seeds, and would overwhelm the woodland if left alone.

Still, condemnation flows freely when the act is theatrical enough. I wonder whether the same fury will meet Toby Carvery, which approved the brutal pruning of a 400-year-old oak in Whitewebbs Park, north London. The police are still investigating. The men who felled the sycamore may face prison. If the company is charged and found guilty, will the punishment match?

I have often visited this old oak in Greenhow, which appears to be a group of three. It is, in fact, one. The centre has rotted away, which is entirely normal. Thus its girth is almost eleven metres, suggesting an age well over six centuries. It is still alive, bursting now with new leaves.

Oak has long been prized as “crooked wood” for the natural curves that suited ships and buildings. An Elizabethan ship would need 2,000 oak trees, taken from fifty acres of woodland and only harvested after fifty years. Oak was also coppiced for charcoal, pit props, and tannin-rich bark.

But this tree escaped all that. It has never been coppiced or pollarded, so The Woodland Trust calls it a “maiden tree.” That it has survived untouched for 600 years is rare. It would have been a sapling during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Lately, it has acquired a name: the Three Witches Oak¹From a story in J.J. Hutton’s ‘Murder, Mysteries and Tales of the Supernatural in the North Riding of Yorkshire‘. A fitting title. I rather prefer it.

• 1
  From a story in J.J. Hutton’s ‘Murder, Mysteries and Tales of the Supernatural in the North Riding of Yorkshire‘