314 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



ancient oak near by, called the Gibbet Oak, on which tradition says that criminals 

 were formerly hung in chains. 



Of the difficulty and risk of removing some of these immense trees when steam 

 traction engines were not in use by timber merchants, Mr. Openshaw gave me an 

 excellent instance which he actually saw himself. A very large oak was felled in 

 a field near Woofferton and sold to a naval timber buyer at Exeter. It was so 

 long and heavy that two of the largest timber carriages were fastened together, 

 and 28 horses brought to get it away. In rolling it up on to the carriage one of 

 the chains got round a horse's leg, but they dared not stop to clear it, and the 

 horse was killed. Mr. Openshaw saw the carriage coming down the road with the 

 log on it, and, believing that it could not pass through the turnpike gate, warned 

 the woman who kept it, to get out of the house, as if the log touched it the house 

 would certainly come down. The man in charge of the team, however, ran on in 

 front and steered the leaders so accurately through the gate that, with an inch to 

 spare, it got past in safety. 



It seems probable that many of the great oaks in England which are now 

 decayed, owe their lives to the cost and risk of converting and removing them in the 

 days when there were no railways, and good roads were scarce or absent. 



The Ntmupton Oa/^.— The remains of a very large fallen oak, not, however, 

 so big as the one at Croft Castle, is described in the Transactions of the Woolhope 

 Naturalists Field Club, 1870, p. 307. It had long been hollow, and was large enough 

 to contain forty-two sheep at once. It was alive and covered with leaves up till 

 about 185 1, when it was set on fire by accident, and was felled soon afterwards, with 

 what object I do not know. In 1870 it was 60 feet long and 26 feet 8 inches in 

 girth, and was still lying in much the same condition when I visited it in 1904. 



According to the late Mr. Edwin Lees, whose knowledge of the botany of 

 Worcestershire was very accurate, and whose sketches of old trees, some of which 

 I have, through the kindness of his widow, been allowed to copy, the finest old 

 oak in the county known to him in 1867 stood in a field near the Severn, below 

 Holt, and was known as the Boar Stag Oak. It measured about 34 feet in girth 

 at 3 feet from the base, and might be roughly calculated at 800 years old. 



Other remarkable oaks in Worcestershire were described and figured by W. G. 

 Smith, in the Gardeners Chronicle, 1873, p. 1497. They grew in the Lug Meadows, 

 near Moreton, and were known as Adam and Eve. When the Shrewsbury and 

 Hereford Railway was made. Eve, which measured 25 feet in girth, and was quite 

 hollow, was converted by the navvies into a residence : the top was thatched in, 

 a brick fireplace built, and a door fitted, and for months after the line was opened 

 this tree was the only residence of the stationmaster, and was afterwards converted 

 into a lamp-room and so used for fourteen years. 



The finest oaks that I know of in Somersetshire are at Nettlecombe Court, the 

 seat of Sir Walter Trevelyan, Bart. When staying at Dunster Castle, in March 

 1904, Mr. Luttrell was good enough to give me an opportunity of seeing them. He 

 told me that at a previous time, which, from the information received from the agents 

 for the property, I gather to have been about 1847, but Mr. Luttrell thinks it was 



