The Lime of Macharen Church

This lime stands by Macharen's Sint-Petrus-Bandenkerk, on the village square, banded by the national tree register to a planting around 1840, roughly 190 years old. Macharen is one of the small riverside villages folded into the municipality of Oss, and a lime on the church square was the ordinary choice for a Dutch village centre for centuries: shade for the market, a meeting point, and a tree nobody had much reason to remove once the buildings around it had grown up to match its age. Common lime, the hybrid the Dutch planted almost everywhere for this purpose, tolerates hard pruning and pollarding better than most trees, which is why so many village limes were kept small and dense for generations before eventually being let go, and a lime this age has usually been through both phases of its life. The register gives no history beyond the species and the decade, which is typical for a tree whose interest is where it stands rather than any single event attached to it. If you know more about this lime, or when the church itself dates from, tell us.