Yuku free message boards

Thanks for your enquiry. The tree that died in the 1860s is (in Lady Jane Robert's excellent book 'Royal Landscape') described "probably mistakenly" as Herne's Oak.

Another tree, felled in 1795, was also known as Herne's Oak!!! (Benjamin West Herne's Oak, 1788. Museum of Fine Arts Boston (42 8 596)

Lady Robert's concludes that "the precise location of the original tree has been much discussed... likely that it was correctly shown on Collier's map of 1742... near the junction with Queen Elizabeth's Walk and the road to Old Windsor."

I regret that I have no details of how Queen Victoria felt at the loss of the tree that she may have believed to be Herne's Oak in 1863, although it seems odd that she was not aware of the earlier tree. Perhaps names of trees were a 'movable feast', the name moving on as circumstances dictated a new 'anointing'!

Victoria was in mourning for Albert who had died only 18 months or so earlier, and so there may be a sympathetic link there from the nation. (Though hardly the whole nation by any stretch of the imagination...)

I attach a little drawing of Herne's Oak Mk II from 1845. It is in pencil with embroidered decoration around its edge, presumably a little project as a break from reading or playing the piano. I hope it is of interest.