The Heaviest Oak in Assen

The register calls this the heaviest oak in Assen and one of the thickest in the whole of Drenthe, then adds the honest complaint: almost nobody has heard of it, next to the famous oaks of Beilen and Mensinge. It grows on the grounds of Nassaulaan 1, a neoclassical house built around 1830 at what was then the edge of town, but it leans so far toward Beilerstraat that it reads from the street as if it belongs there. Beilerstraat itself stayed empty of houses until 1833, when the first one went up at number 2, which makes this oak roughly as old as the street having any houses on it at all. A large limb has come down recently, and a 2022 storm tore off another, though that one missed the trunk. The crown tips show some dieback. None of it looks serious: the trunk itself is sound and unwounded, and the tree still comes into leaf well. You cannot walk up to it. It grows on private ground. But it stands close enough to Beilerstraat, opposite house number 5, that seeing it needs nothing more than the pavement.