ABSTRACT
THE great qualities of the oak were well recognised by our ancestors and it was practically the only tree they used. Not only the virtues of its timber for building, or the value of its bark for tanning and for preparing white lead, were appreciated, but its very acorns for pigs and doubtless its dead-leaf mould for the garden. Where a tree would serve as a useful landmark they seem —for they well knew its long life—to have been careful to spare it from the axe; in the fourteenth century many a tree planted before Alfred was born had just reached middle life. In the annual Beating of the Bounds on Ember Days, different parts of the appropriate religious Office were read at salient points. At these places permanent landmarks would be wanted, and hence we get such place names as Gospel Oak, Surrey; Cressage (Christ’s Oak), Salop; Fair Oak, Hampshire; Holy Oak, Leicestershire.
