HISTORIC OAK TREE

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 290, 2 September 1933, Page 18

HISTORIC OAK TREE

Concrete for Old Trunk

Measures have been taken by the Norfolk Highways Committee to preserve an old oak on the Hethersett to Wymondham Road. The tree is known as Kett’s Oak, for it was beneath .its shade on July 6, 1594, that the tanner and his followers'took an oath to reform the abuses of church and state.

The trouble began when a certain John Flowerdew, of Hethersett, offered the people '4od. to throw down Robert Kett’s fences. Holinshed 'States: “Whereupon they found out a great old oak,'where the said Kett and the other governors might sit and place themselves to hear and determine such quarrelling matters .as came in question.”

Robert Kett met a violent death and his followers were scattered, but the old tree that heard their plans and quarrellings lives on. Mr. H. Goude, the county horticultural superintendent

says he believes the tree to be 800 or 900 years old. It should live for 1000 years, and helping it to do so has taken quite a long time. First of all the split trunk had to be wired together, and, to prevent the wire cutting into the bark and damaging the sap, wood was placed between the wire and the tree. Then the hollow trunk was cleaned and all the dead wood removed. After this the Inside was treated with a preparation designed to kill the wood-mining maggots. . / '. Last of all the trunk was filled with two tons of concrete, and as the tree leaned to one side an iron support was fixed in the concrete. Where the concrete is open to the sky at the top a' mixture of bitumen has been spread to keept out parasites and the damp. The tree has also been sprayed to prevent caterpillars from eating the leaves.