More tree trouble….

But this time serious tree trouble…..

The large oak which stood at the edge of Millfield Lane opposite the Stock Pond causeway. I saw it on my way back aross the heath this afternoon and stopped to talk to Ranger Paul who was trying to clear a gulley beneath its torn up roots to let the water through.

They think it came down on Sunday at some point and very fortunately no one seems to have been around. The tree man who stopped by while I was talking to Paul said that its roots, through which the gulley-stream had been flowing, were completely rotted and soft.

It also stood very close to the lane which means that those roots would have been compacted by all the people and especially by the heavy traffic which uses Millfield Lane on an almost daily basis.

The tree man reckoned that it was probbaly about 160 years old – so not old enough to have watched to Keats and his friends Hazlitt, Lamb and Coleridge striding up and down the lane reading each other their poems but certainly old enough to have seen Victorian ladies in their sweeping skirts taking their exercise. Of course, in oak tree terms, 160 years old is scarcely even adult. There are oaks scatterd around the heath which the tree team reckon are 400-500- years old and the ‘boundary oak’ near Hampstead Gate which sadly finally died in 2016 was recorded in a royal charter in 1227.

If you would like to know more about the other oaks on the heath, have a read of Rory’s excellent blog post on the Heath Hands site.

But back to our fallen oak.

It has fallen across the opening slope up to the meadow but you can get round it without too much difficulty. As you probably know it is heath tree management policy to leave fallen trees where they fall unless they are dangrous or blocking a major route. Paul says he doesn’t think any decision will yet have been made about this one – but I rather hope that they leave it. Apart from the fact that it ‘belongs’ there – what an amazing climbing tree it would make for young climbers.