The Oak of Port Natal
roughly 180 years, from a registered planting date around 1850Pedunculate Oakpin approximate
Two stone gateposts stand next to this oak with nothing left between them to mark: they are what remains of the driveway to Port Natal, a psychiatric hospital built here in 1920 and replaced in 1990 by the Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis that occupies the site today. The oak predates all of it. The register's planting band puts it in the 1840s, when this was still the edge of an estate rather than a hospital ground, and the view across an English-style landscape garden from where it stands is, the register notes, still easy to picture. It grows at the waterside, close by Beilerstraat, with a sound, unmarked trunk and a crown the register simply calls reasonable, no drama attached. What has changed around it several times over is what the tree stands next to: a country estate, an asylum, and now a hospital, each replacing the last while the oak kept growing. It is visible from the public street along the former hospital grounds. If you know more of Port Natal's own history, or this oak's, tell us.
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The pin marks the right spot roughly, not the tree itself. It stands here, but we have not confirmed the precise position on the ground yet. Know exactly where it is?
- Species
- Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur)
- Age estimate
- roughly 180 years, from a registered planting date around 1850
- Location
- Gemeente Assen, Assen, 9401 RK, Europaweg-Zuid 1, (terrein van Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis , langs Beilerstraat, slootkant) ()
- Access
- Free, alongside Beilerstraat on the edge of the former Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis grounds, visible from the public street.
- Getting there
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