Wilberforce Oak
The grounds contain the stump of a tree known as the Wilberforce Oak, easily distinguished from the surrounding trees by a stone seat constructed in its shade.
A Wilberforce diary entry in 1788 reads: "At length, I well remember after a conversation with Mr. Pitt in the open air at the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent into the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to bring forward the abolition of the slave-trade".
An oak sapling was planted in 1969 to replace the aging original pollard oak (Quercus robur, also known as English brown oak). The work was carried out by the Forestry Section of the Kent County Council's Estates Department in collaboration with the Anti-Slavery Society of Denison University.
The original oak tree blew down in a storm in 1991.
Read more about this topic: Holwood House
Famous quotes containing the word oak:
“Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)