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1760 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 
parative shortness of their trunk and branches, when compared with their 
amazing strength and thickness. The exact age of this tree is not known; 
but it cannot be less than seven or eight centuries. (See Young’s Essex, 
vol. ii. p. 136.) 
The Hempstead Oak, near Saffron Walden, is a pollard of great age, and 
has atrunk from 50 ft. to 53 ft. in circumference. 
Flintshire. The Shordley Oak (fig. 1594., from a 
drawing sent to us by W. Bowman, Esq.) is a magni- 
ficent ruin. It is evidently of very great age, and ap- 
pears to have been at some time struck with lightning. 
It is quite hollow ; and its bare and distorted branches _ 
have completely the air of a “ blasted tree.” Its cir- / 
cumference, at 3ft. from the ground, is 40ft.; and at .z 
5ft., 33 ft. 9in. It is 51 ft. high. 
Gloucestershire. The most celebrated oak in this 
county was the Boddington Oak. This tree grew in 
a piece of rich grass land, called the Old Orchard 
Ground, belonging to Boddington Manor Farm, lying near the turnpike 
road between Cheltenham and Tewkesbury, in the Vale of Gloucester. 
The sides of the trunk were more upright than those of large trees generally ; 
and at the surface of the ground it measured 54 ft. in circumference. The 
trunk began. to throw out branches at about 12 ft. from the ground; and 
the total length of the tree was 45 ft. In 1783, its trunk was formed into a 
room, which was wainscoted. Marshall, writing in that year, states that 
it appeared to have been formerly furnished with large arms, but that then 
the largest limb extended only 24 ft. from the bole. The trunk, he adds, “ is 
“ about 12 ft. in diameter; and the greatest height of the branches, by estima- 
tion, 45 ft. The stem is quite hollow, being, near the ground, a perfect shell, 
and forming a capacious well-sized room, which at the floor measures, one 
way, more than 16 ft. in diameter. The hollowness, however, contracts up- 
wards, and forms itself into a natural dome, so that no light is admitted except 
at the door, and at an aperture, or window, at the side. It is still perfectly 
alive and fruitful, having this year (1783) a fine crop of acorns uponit. It is 
observable in this (as we believe it is in most old trees), that its leaves are 
remarkably small; not larger, in general, than the leaves of the hawthorn.” 
(Pl. and Rur. Or., ii. p. 300.) This oak was burnt down, either by accident or 
design, in 1790; and in 1807 there was only a small part of its trunk remain- 
ing, which had escaped the fire. (See Rudge’s Survey of Gloucestershire, 
. 242. 
: At she Bottom, near Ashwick, says Professor Burnet, were growing, a 
few years ago, three fine oaks, called.the King, the Queen, and the Duke of 
Gloucester. The King Oak was 28 ft. 8 in. in circumference at the collar ; and 
about 18 ft. as the average girt to the height of 30 ft., where the trunk began 
to throw out-branches. The Queen Oak, which girted 34 ft. at the base, had 
a clear cylindrical stem of 30 ft. high, and 16 ft. in circumference all the way ; 
bearing two tree-like branches, each extending 40 ft. beyond the bole, and 
girting at the base 8 ft.; containing in all 680 ft. of measurable timber. The 
Duke of Gloucester had a clear trunk, 25 ft. high, averaging 14 ft. in girt. 
Hampshire. Gilpin gives the following account of some celebrated trees in 
the New Forest. The first of these was the tree near which William Rufus 
was slain, and from which, according to the legend, a druid warned him, some 
years previously, of his fate: —“ Leland tells us, and Camden after him, that 
the death of Rufus happened at a place called Througham, near which a 
chapel was erected.” The chapel has perished, and the very name of the 
place is not now to be found within the precincts of the New Forest. The 
tree has also decayed; but, about the middle of the last century, to preserve 
the memory of the spot, a triangular stone was erected on it by Lord Dela- 
ware, who lived in one of the neighbouring lodges; on the three sides of 
which were the following inscriptions : —“ Here stood the oak tree on which 
