The Brockwell Oak
The Brockwell Oak was old before Brockwell Park existed, and old before the country estate the park was made from. Lambeth Council, which owns the ground, said so in 2008 when the tree was counted among London's Great Trees, and put its age at probably well over 700 years. The Great Trees of London list is more cautious: 500 to 700 years as of 2010. Read together, they put the acorn in the ground no later than the early 1500s, and around 1300 or before if the council is right. That band is the honest answer. Even at the cautious end it was more than a century and a half old when the Great Fire burned the City in 1666, a few miles to the north. The public, by contrast, are newcomers: the park only opened in 1892, when this oak was already several centuries into its life. Lambeth gives its girth as over six metres. That is the council's figure rather than a published measurement, and it is a floor, not a ceiling. Photographs from May 2023 show it in full leaf, broad and heavy in open grass, with people picnicking in its shade. The pin comes from the Great Trees map, not a survey of the trunk, so expect to look. You want an oak with a trunk over six metres round, standing in the open. It is not a subtle tree.
catkins hang before the leaves are fully outacorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in themAutumn colour
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.
Brockwell Park, Herne Hill, London SE24 You can recognise it by the trunk, which Lambeth Council puts at over six metres round, on a broad oak standing in open grass. It stands in Brockwell Park, ten minutes from Herne Hill station.
Free; Brockwell Park is a public park, open daily
Herne Hill station about 10 minutes' walk; Brixton about 20
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
