For more of all things London history, sign up for our new (free) newsletter and community: Londonist: Time Machine.
The great deleted trees of London.
London has lost untold millions of trees over the centuries. The biggest cull came in medieval times when huge swathes of forest were felled for building materials, firewood and simply to clear the way for settlements. The Great North Wood (counterintuitively in south London) is a tiny fragment of the tree cover that once characterised the area.
And then there are the individual trees; the ones blessed with character or size around which folk tales are spun. After the Great Storm of 1987, Time Out nominated 41 "Great Trees of London", which it then celebrated in a book. A third of a century later, and seven from that list (17%) have disappeared (at least if this Wiki-page is up-to-date). The depletion, even of our most treasured trees, shows just how precarious arboreal life can be in the big city.
Our list below includes a few further examples of important trees lost to history — some very recently. Feel free to add further suggestions in the comments.
The Hardy Tree
One of London's most celebrated trees bit the dust at the end of 2022, The so-called Hardy Tree in St Pancras churchyard was an oft-Instagrammed landmark, engirdled as it was by a ring of tombstones. The fallen ash got its name from novelist Thomas Hardy who, as a young man, superintended the clearance of graves to make way for St Pancras's railway lines. (Though the pile of gravestones around the ash developed after his time.) At the time of writing, it's still not clear what will become of the site.
The Highgate Cemetery cedar of Lebanon
It's been a terrible few years for London's iconic trees. Just three years before the Hardy Tree, another old friend was felled a couple of miles north. A sprawling cedar of Lebanon had served as a centrepiece of Highgate West Cemetery (which it pre-dated) since its inception in the 1830s. Presiding over the "Circle of Lebanon", the tree seemed like some living funerary monument. Sadly, it developed a fungal infection and had to be felled by tree surgeons before it collapsed.
The Great Storm trees
The greatest tree loss in living memory came with the great storm of October 1987. Powerful winds wiped out an estimated 15 million trees across England — a quarter of a million in London. Quite a few memorials to the storm are dotted across town, at the sites of replacement trees. The most central is an oak tree outside Charing Cross station, with a plaque remembering journalist Angus McGill, who led a campaign to replant.
The Fairlop Oak
The east London area and tube station of Fairlop grew up around a mighty plant known (for reasons disputed) as the Fairlop Oak. It was quite the local landmark, with a circumference of about 20 metres and 17 major branches. The oak became a popular destination for summer gatherings (Queen Anne is said to have picknicked here), and an annual fair sprang up in its acre-sized shadow. By the middle of the 18th century, it had become so popular that an estimated 100,000 people visited each summer. Sadly, the tree declined in health during the early years of the 19th century and was badly injured by a fire in 1805. It soldiered on until 1820 when the remaining ruin of a tree was cut down. Some of the wood was used in the pulpit of St Pancras New Church.
The Seven Sisters
Another tube station (and area) with arboreal etymology is Seven Sisters. The curious name refers to a ring of seven elm trees that once stood on Page Green. According to legend, the seven trees were planted by seven sisters. It may well be true, or it may well be not; nobody knows. What is for sure is that the original trees were in a sorry state by 1852 and replaced with a new heptad (planted by the seven daughters of a Mr J McRae). That set has itself been replaced three times, each time with seven local siblings doing the honours. The current crop are all hornbeams, planted in 1996 by a remarkable delegation that involved five families each with seven sisters. Read the full story here.
The Honor Oak
A third station (this time Overground) named after a tree comes in the shape of Honor Oak in south London. The Quercus in question is found on the summit of One Tree Hill, which these days supports rather more than one tree. The Oak of Honour is said to have gained its special name after Queen Elizabeth I picknicked underneath (a similar tale to the one at Fairlop). That tree is long lost, as is its replacement. The third-generation oak pictured above was planted in 1905.
Other tree places
This list could get mighty long if we're to include every arboreal place name in the capital. There's Gospel Oak, of course, an old boundary oak between Hampstead and St Pancras that was chopped down sometime in the early 19th century. Burnt Oak near Edgware is, rather obviously, a place that once contained a memorably charred oak tree, probably caused by a lightning strike.
Royal Oak is named after a pub, not a tree (although the pub name-checked the famous tree within which Charles II hid). Likewise, Nine Elms is named for a tavern which may in turn have got its name from some actual elms nearby.
Then there are many places named after collections of trees, like Oakwood, Elm Park, Northwood, Wood Green, Woodford, etc. etc. Happily, we've planted all of these onto a map of woody place names.
You can make up your own sordid etymology for Shepherd's Bush.
