NHER 50291 (Monument record) - Site of Big Oak/Thwaite's Oak

Site of a named tree, recorded on S1 (copy in file) as Big Oak, known locally as Thwaite's Oak. Believed to have been at least 500 years old (modern research may suggest a much greater age) when felled in 1901 on the orders of Jonathon Boyce, a local man who had made his fortune in the American goldfields and returned to buy up most of the parish. Legend suggests that he had been driven out of the village and used this as a way of getting his revenge. Fragments were made into furniture as curios throughout the area. As late as the 1990s it was reported that the land on which the tree had once stood still contained 18 inches of leafmould. A replacement tree was planted in 2006 and is registered as a heritage tree (see S2 in file, and copious contempory records in the Bollingbroke Collection, Norwich Castle Museum).
E. Rose (NLA), 1 June 2007.