Nagelboom van 's-Gravenvoeren
Approximate location. Show us where it is
How do I find it? You can recognise it by the nails, at least eighty of them driven into the dead back of the trunk. It stands where two hollow roads cross at the Heuvelke, about 350 metres southwest of the Sint-Lambertuskerk.
At least eighty nails are hammered into the dead side of this horse chestnut, and that is the whole point of it. A nagelboom is a nail tree: you rub a nail over whatever hurts, then drive it into the trunk, and the ailment is supposed to travel into the wood along with it. The nails go into the back of the tree, where part of the trunk has already died, which is the part that takes them. It stands where two hollow roads cross at the Heuvelke, about 350 metres southwest of the Sint-Lambertuskerk in 's-Gravenvoeren. The crossing is thought to follow the line of the Via Mansuerisca, a Roman road, which is a reading of the landscape rather than a settled fact. Its condition is not good and both the Dutch record and the Flemish heritage inventory say so plainly. A successor has already been planted nearby against the day it goes. It was also a finalist for European Tree of the Year, which is a strange pair of things to be at the same time, and it is still standing. Nobody has recorded its age or its girth. The nails are the only count anybody has taken of it, and they were put there one ailment at a time.
- Species
- Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)
- Age estimate
- Location
- Heuvelke, at a crossing of two hollow roads, about 350m southwest of the Sint-Lambertuskerk, 's-Gravenvoeren, Voeren ('s-Gravenvoeren (Voeren), Province de Limbourg)
- Access
- Free, on a public path/hollow road crossing (thought to follow the Roman road Via Mansuerisca).
- Getting there
- On foot from 's-Gravenvoeren village, on a rural hollow-road crossing; no public transport stop at the site.
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Sources
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