The Oak at the Randenbroek Pond

Two counts put this oak two centuries apart. The national register of monumental trees bands its planting to the 1860s, which makes it about 160 years old. A local tree expert's list, sent to us through IVN Amersfoort in October 2026, names it as the oldest tree in the city and dates it to 1650, which would make it about 375. This page carries both. If the local date is right, the oak went into the ground while the painter and architect Jacob van Campen, who designed Amsterdam's town hall, was living here. He was granted Randenbroek in 1626, made the house habitable again after imperial troops occupying Amersfoort burned it in 1629, and turned a farm on marshy ground into a pleasure garden with fish ponds, fountains, orchards and a vineyard of more than forty kinds of grape. When the estate was sold in 1739, the notice listed its plantings of oak, elm and beech. After 1814 the formal garden was remade in the landscape style, with new paths and ponds, and trees were felled to make room for them. This one stands behind the house on the bank of the pond, 5.34 metres round and 25 metres tall by the register's measure. In 2002 the register noted that its dead tops had been cut out, leaving a crown shaped more or less like a candelabra.