The Brandon Hill Oak

The oldest tree on Brandon Hill grows in the one corner of the park the public is not meant to wander into. The Bristol Tree Forum places this oak just inside the park keepers' compound, and adds that it dominates the area all the same. Its boughs reach about twenty metres. The trunk is five metres round. The Forum puts the tree at around 300 years, its own estimate from the survey rather than a dated record, so read it as somewhere between 200 and 400. The Forum also calls Brandon Hill an extraordinary park that has been public open space for 800 years, and this oak the oldest tree on it. Here is what we cannot tell you. Whether the trunk stands in plain view from the park paths, or behind a depot fence with only the crown reaching over, is not something any source we found settles. A crown that size should be hard to miss from the paths around the compound, but nobody has confirmed the view. The pin comes from the survey's grid reference and is approximate. The hill rises right behind College Green and the top of Park Street, about thirteen minutes' walk from Queen Square, so it is an easy detour on the way to Clifton. If you have stood there, tell us which side of the fence the trunk is on and where the best view is. One sentence from someone who has looked would settle what three sources could not.