page_title: Minchenden Oak Garden
section_title: Minchenden Oak
hierarchical_section_title: Minchenden Oak Garden / Minchenden Oak
caption_attribution_description: English: Minchenden Oak, Garden of Remembrance, Waterfall Road, N14. These gardens are on the former site of the Minchenden Estate, one of the great estates in the area, which was owned by the Duke of Chandos. Minchenden House was built around 1747 by John Nicholl from whom Chandos purchased it, using it as his country house after his property Canons. The Duchess Dowager of Chandos lived here on occasion until her death in 1813 and it was then passed to the Marquis of Buckingham whose wife was the daughter and heiress of the last duke of Chandos. The old mansion was knocked down in 1853 although a smaller house, Minchenden Lodge, was built in the mid 19th century to the north. A relic of the grounds of Minchenden House remains today in the form of the Minchenden or Chandos Oak, an ancient pollarded oak tree, said in the 19th century to be the largest in England with a girth of over 27 feet. Edward Walford reports that its spread in 1873 was 'no less than 126 feet, and it is still growing'. It is thought to be a survivor of the ancient Forest of Middlesex and may be some 800 years old. The Minchenden Oak is in what is now known as Minchenden Oak Gardens, which was formed in 1934 as a Garden of Remembrance, on land adjacent to the old graveyard of Christchurch. Here we see this ancient pollarded tree in Autumn.
context_page_description: Minchenden Oak Garden is a public park in Southgate, London owned by the London Borough of Enfield. It was formerly part of the estate of Minchenden House, demolished in 1853, and opened as a garden of remembrance in 1934. The park is just 0.17 hectares in size and is accessed by a gate from Waterfall Road. A key feature of the park is the Minchenden Oak, an 800-year-old tree that is one of the oldest in London. The canopy of the tree was described as the largest in England in 1873.
context_section_description: One of the key features of the garden, (for which it is named), is the Minchenden Oak. The tree is thought to be 800 years old and a survivor of the ancient Forest of Middlesex.  The oak had previously been pollarded for timber, and was already substantial by the time Nicholl's house was built.  
  Because of its association with the estate it became known as the Chandos Oak and was featured in Jacob George Strutt's 1826 Sylva Britannica, by which time it measured 15 feet 9 inches (4.80 m) in girth at a height of 3 feet (0.91 m) off the ground.  In 1873 Edward Walford described it as having the largest canopy of any tree in England at 126 feet (38 m) in diameter and "still growing".  It lost two limbs to a gale in 1899 but by the following year still boasted a canopy of 136 feet (41 m) in spread; its girth was measured at 21 feet 3 inches (6.48 m).
  Minchenden Grammar School was renamed after the tree in 1924 and featured it on their school badge.
  In 1971, some of the oak's major branches were limbed, but Country Life magazine described the tree afterwards as still being "magnificent".  It was found to have a cracked trunk and internal decay in 2013, and was then described as being "perilously close to death".  Works were quickly carried out to reduce the load on the trunk by removing 6 tonnes (6.6 short tons) from the crown and the tree was treated with beneficial fungi. The timber created from the pruning was slated for noticeboards and seating for the garden.  A renovation of the gardens followed, which included the planting of a sapling grown from an acorn of the oak.  The gardens reopened in May 2015 at a formal ceremony presided over by Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.
caption: Michenden Oak in 1999
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