The Oak by the Statue of Frederick Henry

William III wanted somewhere to hunt, and in 1685 he built a palace on the sand north of a village nobody had heard of. In front of it he had oaks planted in avenues, the Koningslaan, because that is what you did with an approach. The national register believes this is one of them. It gives the tree a planting band of 1600 to 1700 and then says why it leans late: probably planted at the same time as the Koningslaan oaks, which means between 1685 and 1690. That reasoning is the register's own and it is worth repeating rather than hiding, because it is the whole basis for calling this tree roughly 340 years old. Nobody has taken a core. What is certain is that it was standing when William became King of England in 1689 and left for London, when the French occupied the palace in 1795, and when the last royal resident died in 1962. It stands beside the statue of Frederick Henry, which is the easiest landmark on the estate. The oak is the heavy one behind it, with the low branching of a tree that grew up in the open rather than in a wood.