" The new
owner spared it, and later when it became my property I did likewise,
for I should have considered it sacrilege to destroy the finest oak in
the neighbourhood. Some years after I had sold the farm I heard that
the tree was blown down in a gale, its enormous head and widespread
branches must have offered immense resistance to the wind, and the
fall of it must have been great.
The most celebrated, if not the biggest oak in the New Forest is the
Knightwood oak, not far from Lyndhurst; it is 17 feet in
circumference, which would make it not less than 450 years old by the
above rule. It is strange to think that it may have been an acorn in
the year 1469, in the reign of Henry VI., and that 200 years later it
could easily have peeped over the heads of its neighbours in 1669, to
see Charles II., who probably went riding along the main Christchurch
road from Lyndhurst with a team of courtiers and court beauties, in
all the pomp of royalty. We know that in that year with reference to
the waste of timber in the Forest during his father's reign he was
especially interested in the planting of young oaks, and enclosed a
nursery of 300 acres for their growth. It is also recorded that he did
not forget the maids of honour of his court, upon whom he bestowed the
young woods of Brockenhurst.
"Oak before ash--only a splash,
Ash before oak--a regular soak,"
is a very ancient proverb referring to the relative times of the
leaves of these trees appearing in the spring, and is supposed to be
prophetic of the weather during the ensuing summer.
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