The Gerichtslinde of Scheessel

Court was held under this lime, and by the account that survives it had been going on since 1288. Scheessel's Femegericht met on the open ground in front of St.-Lucas-Kirche, where the Go- court and later the district court both sat through the Middle Ages. The arrangement outlasted the courts themselves. A pillory still stood beside the trunk around 1900, which is a long run for one town, one spot and one purpose. The tree has grown strange with the centuries. The stem is hollow and split, and the base has widened into what one survey calls two supporting legs, with bark grown through the whole trunk rather than around it. Measured in July 2024 it came in at 7.02 metres round, and was logged as vital that day. A second survey gives 7.10 metres at a metre up. Its age is genuinely unsettled. One register puts it at 500 to 600 years, the other at 800 flat, and neither is copying the other, because their girth figures differ too. Take the wide band. Even at the low end it was already a heavy old tree long before the pillory came and went. Scheessel is a small town on the line between Bremen and Hamburg, and the lime is a short walk from the station. No gate and no ticket: a church forecourt, and the tree the court used to sit under.