Tullamore is an Offaly market town, and its tree stands just inside the gate of the Charleville Forest demesne on its edge. The King Oak has stood there for somewhere between 400 and 800 years, its branches propped and spreading up to 27 metres, and local superstition says a falling limb from it means a death in the family that owns the estate. Thomas Pakenham put it in Meetings with Remarkable Trees; in 2013 it finished third in the European Tree of the Year.
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King Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · 400 to 800 years · Charleville Forest Estate
Local superstition says that when this oak drops a limb, a member of the family that owns it will die. In 1963 lightning split its main trunk, and within weeks Charles Howard-Bury, the estate's owner, was dead. Nobody in Tullamore needed the point made twice.
The King Oak has stood on the Charleville demesne for somewhere between 400 and 800 years; the European Tree of the Year entry and the published record both give that range, and nobody has narrowed it. It was already worth writing down in the 17th century, which is when it first appears on paper. The trunk measures 8.29 metres round and the tree is 19 metres tall, but the width is the thing: its branches reach out as far as 27 metres and bow towards the ground.
The lower limbs are now propped, so part of what you are looking at is a very old tree being held up on purpose. Centuries of pollarding for timber gave it that shape, and generations of local teenagers climbed it to prove their nerve.
Thomas Pakenham put it in Meetings with Remarkable Trees, and in 2013 it finished third in Europe's Tree of the Year with 5,785 votes. It is Ireland's best-known single tree, and it stands just inside the gate of a woodland you can walk into for free.
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