104
THE OAK TREE IN ESSEX.
possesses. Its trunk has a circumference of 18ft. 9in. The circuit of
the shadow of its branches is 312 feet. There are other very
fine oaks in this park, "Old fashioned oak trees" my guide
Fig. 13.—Oak at Barrington Hall, Hatfield Broad Oak.
Circuit of shadow of branches, 312 feet.
called them, using an expression not infrequent in rural Essex when
speaking of oaks more or less decayed. Possibly one of these fine
trees is that for which Arthur Young tells us Sir John Barrington was
offered one hundred guineas. I am told that foxes breed in these
trees, notwithstanding their closeness to the Hall.
Takeley Forest, Mr A. Young observes, "is about half covered
with wood, among which, with a great deal of other very valu-
able timber, is an oak that measures at 5ft. from the ground, 14ft.
in circumference, and is thought will cut to timber at ninety feet."
Takeley Forest is now enclosed in the park of Hallingbury Place.
Great Yeldham Oak.—At Great Yeldham there is an immense oak
tree which, standing in the centre of a three-cross way, forms a very
prominent object and is familiar to every one in that part of the county.
In the "History of Essex by a Gentleman," the following passage
occurs, referring to this tree :—
" On this road, and near the church, is a remarkable large oak tree, supposed
to be upwards of three hundred years old. (A person in this parish, near one
hundred years of age, declares that when she was a child, she heard a person,
who was then older than her by eighty years, say that in his infancy this tree was
distinguished by the appellation of old oak), the stem of which measures twenty-