This is the Bowthorpe Oak, in Lincolnshire, which was apparently provided with a floor, benches and a door in 1768, since when “frequently twelve persons have dined in it with ease,” according to the letterpress accompanying J. C. Nattes’ engraving of it in 1800. When John Clare wrote a sonnet on the tree, perhaps in the 1820s, it seemed a “melancholy tree,/Age-rent, and shattered to a stump,” yet it looked extremely healthy on our visit on November 13th. At a time when most oak trees were losing their leaves, this tree still had abundant green foliage. It actually looks much healthier now than it does in the Nattes engraving. Part of the trunk has fallen in, so dinner parties for 12 are no longer a viable option, but it still stands in an isolated, and very rural setting, on the edge of a farmyard.
This tree is not in Strutt's Sylva Britannica, but he refers to it in a letter to a member of the Dilke family, dated 8th June 1825: "the tree between Bourn and Stamford I shall undoubtedly visit the first time I travel that way." (Warwickshire County Record Office). Evidently, his correspondent had recommended it as another suitable subject for him.
This tree is not in Strutt's Sylva Britannica, but he refers to it in a letter to a member of the Dilke family, dated 8th June 1825: "the tree between Bourn and Stamford I shall undoubtedly visit the first time I travel that way." (Warwickshire County Record Office). Evidently, his correspondent had recommended it as another suitable subject for him.
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