The people who planted this tree lived in a forester's house at the Rond de Condé. The house is gone. Their chestnut is 22.3 metres tall. It is also an outsider here. The Forêt de Senonches runs roughly three quarters sessile oak and a fifth beech, and sweet chestnut barely features: the local forest association, which keeps the map of the forest's remarkable trees, calls this one of very few chestnuts in the whole forest. Its trunk measures 1.13 metres across, about 3.55 metres round. Nobody has dated it. The association's own entry says only that it was probably planted more than a century ago, by the people in that vanished house, and puts no number on it. Its neighbours on this walk both carry ages to the year, so the gap is conspicuous rather than typical. If you know when it went in, tell us. October is when it earns the detour. Sweet chestnut drops spined burrs, they split on the ground, and the tree stands at the picnic area at the Rond de Condé rather than off in the timber, so the harvest lands where people sit. The waymarked venerable-trees loop comes through here, and the five-trunked Chêne Fauteuil is a short walk away at the same junction. Most visitors come for the oaks and find this instead.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Forêt domaniale de Senonches, Rond de Condé (parcelle 155), Senonches, Eure-et-Loir
You can recognise it by the species: the only sweet chestnut at this junction in a forest of oak and beech, long toothed leaves, spined burrs underneath in autumn. It stands 22 metres tall at the Rond de Condé picnic area.
Free, no permission needed. State forest (forêt domaniale de Senonches, Parc naturel régional du Perche), stands at the Rond de Condé picnic area, on the same official waymarked 'venerable trees' loop as the Chêne Fauteuil (a short walk further along the same circuit).
No public transport to the forest interior; reachable on foot from the Rond de Monsieur parking area via the marked forest loop, or by the gravelled track direct to Rond de Condé. Nearest town is Senonches.
In bloomIn fruit
October, when the burrs split open across the picnic area
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.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
