probably all hollow but can live on until they reach 6 - 7 m. round at an age of 250
- 300 years. It is suggested that had the larger limbs not been removed and the
iron band and zinc plates fitted, the tree would have broken up completely soon
after 1859; this indicates that the original planting (it surely must have been an
intentional plant) might have taken place in the second half of the 16th century or
early in the 17th. If the tree is of such (comparatively) recent origin, it may account
for the fact that no legends appear to have grown up around it - nor does it even
seem to have acquired a suggestive name such as 'King Harold's Elm' (or even
'King Henry's').
There do not seem to be any useful documentary references (prints of the
church back to the 1760's show a large tree in the appropriate position in the
churchyard and the John Varley paintings on show in the museum depict it
beautifully) but if details of the origin of the tree are still obscure, at least its end
is on record. Farewell, old tree!'
Oliver Rackham has suggested this tree, being a pollard, could have been as much as 500
years old.
The tree was an English Elm (Plate 18).
The Elm on the Green, Havering-atte-Bower
An October gale in 1955 brought about the demise of this huge tree. This fine elm, apparently
a pollarded English Elm, had stood on the green for at least 300 years (although one newspaper
headline of the time described it as a 'thousand-year-old oak'!), providing shade for miscreants
locked up in the village stocks close by the tree. Smith (1925) describes stocks being present,
but decayed, on the green in 1670 along with a cage and whipping post. The Elm and stocks
were a feature of the village but have now gone completely. The Elm had its top branches blown
off in the 1955 gale and despite protest by some local villagers, including the parochial church
council, the bricked up trunk of the tree was shortly after removed by order of Romford Council
in 1956 (Plate 19).
The Lion Tree, Maldon
(I should like to thank Mrs. R. Jopson for drawing my attention to the information below in a
booklet 'Maldon and Heybridge in Old Picture Postcards' by Peter Came.)
This locally famous tree (Plate 12) was so called because a remarkable excrescence on the
side of the tree came to resemble a lion's head. The tree was in a hedgerow near the entrance
to Beeleigh Falls house, Beeleigh near Maldon. The road the tree grew in eventually became
Lion Avenue. The tree was eventually topped at a point just above the lion's head immediately
after the close of World War I and the tree was finally removed in 1934.
The Elm Circle at Hempstead
This circle of elms was apparently a meeting place where cock-fighting mains were held (Plate
13). The trees are pollard elms and the photograph shows them to have been recently lopped.
Adam's Elm, Leigh
A single elm is marked on the Chapman and Andre map of 1777 (Fig. 6) at the junction of the
road from Leigh (then Lee) and the Hadleigh to Southend Road (Southend was a small hamlet
at this time). The tree must have been of a substantial size to have been marked on the map. It
was named 'Adam's Elm', I would think because it was thought to have been so old as to have
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