Hilvarenbeek maps two trees. The Gebodenlinde on the Vrijthof is the lime the village aldermen stood under to read out local decrees, which also sheltered the linen market and served as the courthouse tree. A day trip away near Bladel stands the Witch Tree of Black Kate, an ordinary beech twisted into a wild shape by clay soil and foot traffic, carrying a gothic 1852 legend its own forester calls made up.
0 of 2 visited in Hilvarenbeek
Common Lime (Tilia x europaea) · 320-350 years · Hilvarenbeek, Noord-Brabant
Before a village had a noticeboard, it had a tree. Hilvarenbeek's aldermen stood under this lime to read out the local decrees, which is what a gebodenlinde is: a proclamation lime. It sheltered the linen market as well, and served as the courthouse tree.
Its predecessor died in 1675 and the village did not wait around. A document dated 22 April 1676 records that a young lime had recently been planted on the Vrijthof. Whether the tree standing there today is that one or a 1704 replacement has never been settled, which is why the age comes as a band of roughly 320 to 350 years rather than a date. bomenbieb flags the uncertainty itself.
Whatever the year, it has become substantial: 6.21 metres round and 23 metres tall, out on the open square beside the church, the water pump and the bandstand, with a bench underneath. The heavy limbs needed structural support in 1974 and got it.
And it is still being arranged for. Omroep Brabant reported that the municipality is working out how to improve the tree's growing conditions, giving the roots more space, air and water. Three hundred and fifty years after the aldermen used it as their public address system, the village is still making decisions about this lime.
European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) · 130 years · Ten Vorsel estate, Bladel (roughly 16 km from Hilvarenbeek)
A forester working on its estate has said on record that its species is nothing special and its legend is made up. It came fourth in Europe anyway: 18,452 votes in the 2020 European Tree of the Year, after the Dutch title in 2019.
The reason is its shape. The trunk is short, the crown twists off in every direction, and the roots sit partly on top of the ground, as if they never managed to get into it. Hard clay in the subsoil is one cause; the feet of its visitors are the other, which is why a low fence has circled the trunk since 2019. The estate's manager says walkers at dusk have been startled by it.
The legend explains the shape differently. In 1852 the Bladel-born writer Renier Snieders published a tale about Zwarte Kaat, Black Kate, a robber chief who stole the child of the lord of Ten Vorsel. Caught years later and beheaded, she was refused a grave in consecrated ground, so the story goes, and buried on the heath under a young beech. This, supposedly, is that beech.
The register is less gothic. It dates the tree to around 1890, which makes it about 130 years old and younger than the book. It stood alone on open heath and was kept when the land was planted as forest in the early 20th century.
It stands near Bladel, about 16 km from Hilvarenbeek's lime: a separate trip by car, not part of the same walk.