Edwinstowe – Major Oak

This substantial oak tree is, according to legend, where Robin Hood and merry men rested. The tree is approximately 800 to 1,000 years old and there’s a substantial and complex scaffolding arrangement to support the branches which has been in place since the Victorian period. Sitting under the tree for a picnic was also a very fashionable thing to do, and a newspaper in 1863 said that “the tree may yet stand for many more generations”. At the beginning of the twentieth century, some tree expert decided that it would be a marvellous ideal to pour concrete in the trunk to help protect it, which was perhaps not entirely the most sensible thing to do.

There was another tree, known as the Shambles, which is where the merry men hang their venison. Unfortunately, although this tree became a little bit of a celebrity icon, or something like that, in the nineteenth century, it fell down in the 1960s.