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| Savernake Forest |
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EVERYONE who drives through Savernake Forest on the Marlborough to Salisbury road knows about the Big Belly Oak, even if they do not realise that it is more than 1,000 years old. However, few people, apart from those who spend time foraging deep in the forest, know that Savernake is home to a collection of some of the oldest trees in Europe. In fact the forest, which is owned by the Marquis of Ailesbury's family but mostly run by the Forestry Commission, is regarded as having one of the best collections of 'monarch' trees in Britain. The trees often have names given them over time by local people and foresters, for example the Duke's Vaunt, the Amity Oak, Braydon Oak, the Spiral Oak, the Cathedral Oak, the Kings Oak and Queens Oak and the imaginatively named King of Limbs. 
By virtue of their great age, the trees are humbling. Cars are referred to as vintage when they are less than 100 years old. Furniture is regarded as antique when it reaches a century and it is still a remarkable achievement for a human being to reach 100.But some of the Savernake sovereigns are more than ten times that age. The Big Belly oak is the great grandfather of them all at about 1,100 years old, taking root at a time when William the Conqueror defeated King Harold in 1066. The Big Belly Oak was a sapling at the time of King Alfred the Great and, as Savernake was a royal hunting forest, he could well have ridden past the tree. It is almost certain that King Henry VIII, who courted Jane Seymour in and around the forest in the mid-1500s, would have seen the then 500-year-old tree, and perhaps kissed under its spreading branches. The great oaks in Savernake forest are descendants and just a few generations removed from the trees that were among the first living things to appear when the last Ice Age receded. Many of the trees are steeped in local folklore and it is said that if anyone dances naked round the Big Belly Oak, also referred to as the decanter oak because of its bulbous shape, 12 times anti-clockwise at midnight, the devil will appear. The Amity Oak stands at the precise point where three parishes, Little Bedwyn, Mildenhall and Savernake, meet. |
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