Not a single tree, but a Hornbeam coppice with Oak standards at Cranham, Essex.
I used to play in this wood when I was 10 years old and it didn't look then like it does now, as it had been coppiced some 10 years earlier and was overgrown with underwood.
I went on a visit a couple of weeks ago for the first time in 40 years and there has been a startling transformation.
There's a distinct wood bank which surrounds the wood and has the bank on the inside and ditch on the outside, which is typical for coppiced woodland, as it would need to be fenced in. There would have been a hedge on top of the wood bank to keep the deer and livestock out so as to preserve the valuable coppice shoots. All the hedgerow species are still there and make for an interesting contrast to the Hornbeam and Oak in the wood.
Wood Bank.
OK you say, what's remarkable about all this ?....
Well, the woods around Cranham appear in The Domesday Book, and the Hornbeam stools are a good 6 feet or more in diameter with their centre having decayed away, which makes the stools look like they're rings of trees and indicates that they have been cut many times. All of the stems in the same ring share the root system and DNA as the original tree.
The railway from Southend to London (built in 1885) splits the wood in two, so the wood easily pre-dates that, and there's an even older faint wood bank inside the existing coppice, suggesting that it's an ancient managed woodland and easily several hundred years old. It just goes to show that a tree doesn't necessarily need to be big, for it to be ancient.
Large Hornbeam Stool.
Looks like it's more than ready for another cut and a bit of hedge laying.