An oak for the ages

Since prehistoric times, a giant tree had slumbered in the Fenland soil, until, in 2012, a farmer stumbled across it. Now, skilled craftsmen have transformed the oak into a ‘Table for the Nation’, as a jubilee tribute to the Queen, writes Rosanna Morris

On a spring day a decade ago, as preparations were underway to mark Her Majesty the Queen’s 60-year reign, a farmworker driving a tractor across a Norfolk field felt the plough hit something. Something large, something solid. There was no tang of metal striking stone but a deep, low whump. A groan from the depths.

The tractor driver knew what it would be. For centuries in this part of the world – the flat, low-lying land of East England – those cultivating the soil have often connected with these cumbersome objects buried beneath the claggy earth. Climbing down from the tractor and investigating further, the driver’s suspicions were confirmed – the plough had struck a tree. But this was no ordinary tree. It was an oak tree that had rested in this spot for 5,000 years, an ancient remnant of one of the many forests that once covered Britain.

Scraping back the dark, peaty soil in which it had been preserved for millennia would reveal a coal-black, wet surface of a huge, branchless trunk. Part of an oak tree like none seen living in modern times.

The six-tonne hulk was dragged from the field, and farm manager Martin Hammond called in the experts. “I’d never seen anything like it,” says Hamish Low, Britain’s foremost expert on black oak, or bog oak, who has dedicated 30 years to perfecting how to process this unique timber. Hamish is often called when bog oak is discovered in the Fens of East Anglia, and he travelled from Kent to assess the find. This time, what he saw astounded him.

“I wanted to evoke a sense of wonder about how vast these trees were”

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“I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.”

Lying before him was a perfectly preserved specimen more than 13 metres long. It was the largest and finest example of bog oak Hamish had ever encountered. “The degree of preservation was extraordinary,” he says.

“There was not an insect hole in the entire tree, no fungal disease, which they tend to have.

I decided there and then that we shouldn’t cut this one, as we usually do, to transport them.”

That moment was the beginning of a mammoth undertaking. What became known as the Fenland Black Oak Project would take 10 years and involve multiple craftspeople and volunteers. The giant tree would be named the Jubilee Oak.

TREASURE IN THE ROUGH

Bog oak has been unearthed on the Fens since the marshy land was drained and turned into arable fields in the 17th century, but it was never valued, instead cast aside on the headlands during ploughing and used as firewood. As soon as it comes out of the ground, the timber starts to degrade and crack, which meant only small pieces were used for woodwork.

Hamish, a Cambridge-born cabinetmaker who spent his childhood on the Fens, has helped change all that by devising an exacting way to dry out black oak in a controlled environment so it could be used for furniture-making. He has spent years convincing landowners in the Fens that bog oak is a precious and finite resource. When he saw the Jubilee Oak lying in the field, he seized the chance to tell its story.

“I wanted to save a really good example with all the unique characteristics, and raise awareness among other Fenland landowners about how important this material is,” he says.

“People don’t appreciate things until they’re gone. This wood, when dry, is the Holy Grail.

The medullary figure is spectacular,” he says, referring to the markings characteristic of cut oak: fine ‘rays’ that run horizontally, across the grain. “You can produce such accurate details,” he adds. “I wanted to evoke a sense of wonder about how vast these trees were and the scale of these ancient forests, too.”

GIFT OF PRESERVATION

The plan was to preserve the full length of the tree in the form of an iconic table and place it within Ely Cathedral as a gift to the nation. The cathedral is built on the highest land in the Fens and surrounded by fields that contain the last of these sub-fossilised black oaks.

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BOG OAK:
FENLAND ALCHEMY

As the last Ice Age ended and the ice melted in about 10,000 BC, the seas rose and new lands formed, which would become covered in dense forests inhabited by our Stone Age ancestors. Sea levels continued to change and the area in east England that we now refer to as the Fens – comprising parts of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Suffolk – went through a succession of floods. Peat formed in these vast low-lying areas as vegetation decomposed in the wet conditions. The great trees that had grown in the forests rotted in the flooded ground and came crashing down into the silt and peat, which would preserve them anaerobically. The intense colour of black oak is a result of soluble irons in the mineral subsoil reacting with tannins in the wood.

While the trees slumbered and centuries passed, the Romans came and went, abbeys appeared, and Ely Cathedral was built. But in 1630, when landowners started draining the Fens to create arable land, the peat dried and contracted and the land sank, gradually revealing the ancient oaks over time.

Radiocarbon dating has the oaks at 4,800 to 5,500 years old. Today, the peat in the farmed areas of the Fens continues to erode at an average rate of two centimetres per year.

Hamish (above) believes the last of the bog oaks will be uncovered within the next 20 years.

The first thing to do was wrap the tree in polythene, and rebury it. Then for six months, they worked out the logistics and viability of saving and milling the tree, including shipping an enormous sawmill over from Canada to have it quartersawn into 10 sequential planks. To preserve black oaks, they must be converted into planks and dried artificially to manage even rates of water extraction. “It was a lot of jeopardy – you don’t know it’s viable until it’s dry,” explains Hamish.

The milled planks were transported to the Building Crafts College in London, run by the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, and placed in a 15-metre dehumidifying kiln designed and built specifically for the project. It took nine months to dry the planks, during which time 1,804 litres of water were extracted.

Once the planks were ready, funds were raised for the construction of the table. In 2019, a team of 20 students worked four full-length planks for the table top using a 29m-long planer bed and joined them with a beautiful ‘river joint’; each end inscribed with words commemorating the two jubilees.

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The completed piece of furniture was unveiled at Ely Cathedral in May, in time for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. “At times I did wonder whether this was a good idea or insanity,” says Hamish. “But we have saved it – it exists. It has a lot of atmosphere to it. The wood works beautifully because it is so dense.”

This remarkable density also means black oak makes an exceptional tone wood for use in instruments. The first luthier (stringed instrument maker) to use it is guitar maker Gary Southwell, who discovered Hamish 10 years ago. “It was an important moment when Hamish Low met Gary Southwell,” says Richard Durrant, a guitarist and composer whose music is influenced by the landscape of the British Isles. Richard travels the UK playing on one of Gary’s guitars constructed of bog oak. “When I first picked up the guitar, I played things on it I didn’t know I knew. The sound is surprisingly bright,” he says. For Richard, bog oak is special because of the story. “There’s a sense of a connection with our shared history.”

Preserved for perpetuity in artefacts such as the table and the guitar, bog oak’s story is told in a powerfully evocative way. The notes plucked and heard across the land, the mighty table admired in the nave of a cathedral, standing tall where once forests towered.

MUSIC FROM AN ANCIENT OAK

Luthier Gary Southwell had been using bog oak for ornamentation in his work since the late 1980s but when he met Hamish in 2011, while on the hunt for supplies, Hamish presented him with a large section, which opened up the possibility of making a whole guitar. “I had this intuition that it would not only make a great-looking guitar but also a great-sounding guitar,” says Gary. “There was something about how it felt, its density and its resonance.” Gary used the black oak for most of the guitar except the soundboard (front of the guitar). He has since made about 20 bog oak guitars.

“One of the great characteristics they have is that they are very responsive to the player’s touch,” he says. “They have a great sustain – the note played lasts a long time when the string is plucked. You can’t help but be mesmerised by playing something on a piece of wood that has been laying in the ground for 5,000 years.”

Gary’s bog oak guitars are celebrated in the Heartwood CD; see southwellguitars.co.uk. See guitarist Richard Durrant on his Music for Midsummer tour, 2–29 June. richarddurrant.com

Tune in Watch Richard Durrant in a film about the bog oak guitar on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=BfizNNMJ6Gg

Rosanna Morris is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Somerset. When she’s not writing, she’s usually gardening, painting or adventuring outdoors.

Photo: Fenland Black Oak CIO, Gary Southwell, Jessica Cresswell / The Woodland Wife, Lanie Pringle, Alamy