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The Major Oak

This ancient tree is the major tourist attraction in the Sherwood Forest Country Park. It is reputed to be over 1,000 years old. in the first half of the 20th Century visitors could walk right up to the tree but now it is fenced off to protect the soil around the trunk from erosion and the tree itself.

In the mid 18th Century the tree was known as the Cock Pen Tree as it was used as a holding site for fighting cocks which were stacked in wicker baskets and hessian sacks inside the hollow trunk before they were released for the now illegal sport of cock fighting.
In 1790 a Major Hayman Rooke wrote a popular book called "Remarkable Oaks in the Park of Welbeck in the County of Nottinghamshire" in which he mentioned the tree. A short time later the tree was renamed the Major's Oak which was quickly modified to the Major Oak. Apart from a short period in the 19th Century when it acquired the additional name of the Queen Oak, it retains this name to this day.