LAST week, we told how a 300-year-old walnut tree has been discovered growing quietly in the grounds of a copper mine king in Middleton Tyas, making it the oldest known walnut in County Durham and North Yorkshire.

We asked its discoverer, Rodger Lowe, of Teesdale Heritage Trees, to point us in the direction of the oldest of all the trees in the area.

“Normally, we’d be thinking about yews but there aren’t any real contenders in the region I’m afraid,” says Rodger. “We have a couple we can date by the house to 1601 and 1606, but they are not impressive trees yet.

“So the next longest lived species is oak.”

The best guide to a tree’s age – unless you cut it down and count its rings – is its girth, which is the circumference of its trunk as measured 1.5m above the ground.

From the Woodland Trust’s ancient tree inventory, it becomes clear that to be a contender for our oldest tree title, an oak has to have a girth of more than six metres, and the biggest and the best are to be found on the craggy banks of the Tees and its tributaries. There, they have been able to escape the clearances of agriculture, and their inaccessibility has prevented them from being chopped down and made into roof beams or ship’s timbers or pit props.

In Selaby Basses – the woodland on the rise up from the river to Selaby Hall to the west of Gainford – there’s an oak with a girth of 660cms.

A little further west, in the grounds of Stubb House, there’s one that’s 670cms.

They are, though, just babies.

At Rokeby, near the Greta, there’s an oak with a girth of 700cms. At Cliffe, on the Yorkshire bank of the Tees opposite Piercebridge, there’s another of the same size.

Now we are coming to the big boys…

On the Durham bank of the Tees opposite Wycliffe, in an area the Ordnance Survey map calls Graft’s Farm, there is a whopper with a girth of 768cms.

But the biggest, by far, is in a remote ravine in Baldersdale, near Cotherstone. It’s girth is 800cms.

Rodger Lowe, of Teesdale Heritage Trees, with the 700cm oak at Rokeby, near Barnard Castle, on the banks of the Greta

Rodger Lowe, of Teesdale Heritage Trees, with the 700cm oak at Rokeby, near Barnard Castle, on the banks of the Greta

“It’s in an elevated location which is wild and woolly, and it’s hidden,” says Rodger. “It grew to a size where it was too big for the handsaws of the old days to cut through and now, even with modern chainsaws, it is in such a bad location, you couldn’t get it out, so no one has bothered with it for centuries.

“It isn’t in the best of growing conditions, and yet it is massive.”

It is on the north bank of the Balder in the grounds of the Doe Park caravan site. It may even have been deliberately left as marker for a parish or property boundary.

Doe Park at the front, surrounded by its caravan site in the beautiful Teesdale countryside. The treeline on the right is the course of the River Balder and contains our 800-year-old oak

Doe Park at the front, surrounded by its caravan site in the beautiful Teesdale countryside. The treeline on the right is the course of the River Balder and contains our 800-year-old oak

“So now you are going to ask me to put an age on it which I’m loathe to do,” says Rodger. “Oak are the most studied species but most of the data is confined to Windsor and the royal parks.

“On the matrix I have, which is based in southern England growing in good conditions, an 8m girth oak is dated at 700 years old, so anything that big up here and in poor growing conditions has to be older.

“800?

“Certainly these trees pre-date almost all of the man-made structures in the country. They are national monuments without any legal status and barely any recognition. Go to other countries, Norway, for instance, and big trees are designated as national monuments.”

If only the 800-year-old Doe Park oak could talk it could tell amazing stories of slaughter by the Scots, of the christening of calves by an ancient stone, and of the headless horseman of Balderdale. We’ll have to catch up with all of those stories next week…

If you have stories of old or unusual trees, we’d love to hear from you. Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk