What is the oldest tree in Glasgow?

Darnley takes its name from the personal name behind the district, which pre-dates the sycamore by centuries, but by the time Mary Stuart is said to have sat beneath it in 1565, both name and tree were already established features of the countryside south of Glasgow. The city grew out to meet the tree rather than the other way round; postwar housing now surrounds it on every side, with a fence and small plaque the only markers separating it from ordinary suburban Darnley. It has needed defending twice before: once in the early 1900s, when a resident's complaint kept a new tramline from running through it, and again in 1969, when a Barrhead schoolteacher marched primary pupils out with placards to stop a dual carriageway doing the same. Its most serious threat came from weather rather than planners: Storm Eowyn's 100mph gusts in January 2025 tore away roughly half its crown. Council arborists inspected it by hoist rather than write it off from the ground, found the trunk sound, and expect it to stand for decades yet, its recovery now as much a part of the story as its age.