10 EEV. DE. GEE — FAMOUS TEEES IN HEETFOEDSHIEE. 



iiuclcrminod beneath it. The whole height, as given me by a 

 timber dealer's measurement, is 73 feet; but I distrust his 

 measuring to the very top of what he would call waste. Indeed, 

 another measurement gives twice this, 140 feet, as the extreme 

 height, but that again has not my confidence. The branches, he 

 states, stretch southwards 60 feet, and northwards 35 feet, making 

 a shelter of some 100 feet in diameter. All accounts agree that it 

 increased rapidly in the later years of its growth. According to 

 Clutterbuck, between 1719 and 1805 it added 480 cubic feet of 

 timber to its contents. A certain Mr. Barker, timber measurer, of 

 Bishop's Stortford, says that this growth had not ceased in 1795 ; 

 further that in 15 years from 1780 it had increased only 1| inches 

 in circumference. The value of the tree, as containing 17 loads of 

 timber at £15 per load, with top and bark, the valuer, Mr. Ellis, 

 in 1811, places at £255. 



There is another, and a nearer tree, an oak of this same character, 

 which I wish to commend to you. It is the Grimston Oak at 

 0xhey. This tree, insufficiently known, stands a few yards from 

 Oxhey Chapel, at the fence of Mr. Black well's farmhouse. It is 

 17 feet in circumference, and 24 feet in "length," which means, I 

 suppose, the length of its branches. I should have taken it to be 

 about that number of feet to the branches. It is a very well 

 grown tree, very dear to the Gorhambury family, who, I am in- 

 formed, have commended it to the care of the new propiietor of 

 the estate. It was planted by James, second Viscount Grimston, 

 who died in 1773, and who had married the daughter of John 

 Askell Bucknall, Esq., the heiress of Oxhey. The tradition of the 

 family. Lord Verulam tells me, is that his great-grandfather 

 planted this tree with his own hands. Supposing him to have 

 planted the tree some 20 years before his death — his eldest son was 

 26 years old at his death — you get a fair idea what a well- grown 

 oak would become in 120 years' time. 



I would like to mention an ash in my parish, not because of its 

 extreme size, but because I do not happen to know a finer, and 

 because it is a very well grown tree. It stands at the Hyde-lane 

 Farm, in Abbot's Langley parish, and is 12 feet round. It has 

 a fine, clear, straight stem, appreciated only by standing directly 

 underneath the tree. It once, I am told, had a narrow escape 

 from the usual fate of trees, — becoming the axis of a water-wheel. 

 It then, many years ago, said the old top-sawyer, my informant, 

 contained three loads of timber. 



I have now to speak of those trees which, without reference to 

 height or girth, are famous from historical associations. Foremost 

 among these stands out Queen Elizabeth's Oak at Hatfield. HaK- 

 way down the avenue leading from the house towards Hertford, 

 and surrounded by a fence, and in not vigorous health, or of very 

 remarkable bulk, stands this tree, which I myself years ago visited 

 with reverence, and brought away a leaf (I would not have broken 

 off a branch for the world), to be preserved among such mementoes 

 of our history. I very nearly took off my hat to it. On the 



