Seasons1 of 4
Under the Dutch Republic, Catholics in Twente worshipped where they could, and one of the places they could was under this oak. They kept it up until roughly 1730, at a small field chapel beside the trunk that locals called the hilligen huesken, the little holy house. The tree was already old by then, and it had a job. A kroezeboom is a Twente boundary oak, a loakboom, planted to mark where one man's fields stopped and the next man's began, and later used as the spot where border disputes got argued out. This one probably went in between 1500 and 1600, which puts it at 400 to 500 years. Some sources call it the oldest pedunculate oak in the Netherlands and reach for 700 or 1,000 years; that case is thin, and the conservative figure is the one carried here. It is a heavy tree either way, 7.25 metres round on the open ridge of the Fleringer Es. A cast-iron fence keeps visitors off the trunk, and steel supports fitted under the arborist Jorn Copijn in the 1960s and 70s are still visible. The Sint Pancratius parish of Tubbergen has owned the site since 1916. A timber-framed chapel stands beside the tree, successor to a neo-Gothic one of 1944, and Catholic and peace-movement gatherings have met there since 1970. Park on the Jan van Arkelweg and walk five minutes.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Lansinkweg, on the Fleringer Es between Tubbergen and Fleringen, beside the chapel
You can recognise it by the cast-iron fence ringing its trunk and the visible steel supports fitted decades ago, with a small timber-framed chapel standing beside it. It stands on the open ridge of the Fleringer Es.
Free. Public site with a marked parking area on the Jan van Arkelweg and a signed, roughly 5-minute walk to the tree; an unpaved path runs alongside it. A cast-iron fence protects the trunk itself, so visitors view rather than touch it.
Nearest station Almelo, then bus toward Tubbergen/Fleringen and a walk from the village.
In fruit
September to October: acorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in them
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen (Bomenstichting), no. 1685128
- bomenbieb.nl
- nl.wikipedia.org
- visitoost.nl
- services-eu1.arcgis.com