Bailey Hill’s Coronation Oak

In June 1902 Mold prepared itself for a lavish and grand celebration – the coronation of King Edward VII. There were worries about the King’s health as the date neared but court circulars gave reassurance that it was just a case of lumbago. It was then a huge shock when only 48 hours before the coronation he was taken ill with a life threatening condition, perityphlitis and needed an urgent operation.

‘Pretty Mold’ had prepared itself for the Coronation on so stupendous a scale that even the Ladysmith, Mafeking and Peace celebrations would have paled before it. Upon receipt of the disconcerting news regarding the health of the King, the Coronation Committee immediately set to work to delete from their programme all the items it was possible to abandon.

Source: The National Library of Wales

The Mold Coronation Committee immediately reduced the huge activity programme which had been so meticulously planned. At the beginning of June 1902 the committee had decided to plant an oak tree to commemorate the coronation. In spite of the cancellation the planting went ahead and the tree was ‘well and truly planted’ by Mrs Beresford, wife of the Chairman of Mold Urban District Council, where it still stands today, a youngster by tree standards.

It is worth noting that Mrs Beresford’s Christian name is missing from the tree’s planting inscription, this was common practice at the turn of the Twentieth Century. This was an interesting time for women, with growing pressure to allow women more rights in society, including the right to vote. Soon after, in 1903, the Pankhursts formed the Women’s Social and Political Union to actively campaign for women’s votes, but had to wait until 1918 before the right was granted. Even then, it was only for women age 30+ and full equal rights were not reached until 1928.

Fortunately, today, with access to the online records we are able to give Mrs Beresford – or Lucy - a voice. Lucy was 7 years younger than her husband Samuel, and was born in Saltby in Leicestershire. The 1871 census shows them living at 197 Woodland Villas in Mold. He is a bookseller and printer and she is an assistant, although we don’t know if it is an assistant to him or not and if so whether at home (such as a maid) or work. The BH history group has been unable to find a marriage certificate or registration, so if you know the family and have more information, please get in touch!

It seemed Lucy and Samuel stayed in Mold for the rest of their lives. By 1881 they were living at 1 Wrexham St and then by 1901 in Belgrave House, Mold, where they had a general house servant, Eliza Burrowes, living with them. Later when Samuel died in 1912 and was buried in Mold Cemetery, Lucy made a donation to a chapel in her husband’s name. She appears to have had no children and died in 1918 aged 73.

The following year in 1903 a further row of trees was planted on the upper High Street, on one side of the road to commemorate the coronation and the other to celebrate peace following the end of the Boer War in South Africa. You can see the bronze plaque (originally in the Town Hall) linked to these trees at the High Street entrance to the Daniel Owen Precinct. Oaks are evolutionarily very old, and vital to survival of the woods they inhabit, their age makes them popular in myth and legend and are frequently featured in history as a place people remember and can assemble around.

Oak (genus Quercus) pollen has been found fossilised in Austria some 52 million years old and over this time around 600 species of oak have been identified world-wide. It is only in 2020 that the genome of the oak has been documented - as oaks tend to cross fertilise, making it difficult to trace their evolution by conventional observation. Foundational to the functioning of the forests that they form, they foster diversity of organisms from fungi to wasps, birds and mammals. They capture carbon dioxide, cleaning the air and absorbing atmospheric pollutants. Oaks have significantly shaped human development - we have previously eaten their acorns (they have to be cooked first to remove the tannins) and providing material with which to build our homes and ships.

Bailey Hill’s oak was picked because of the tree’s importance over the years, as part of country wide celebrations of the impending coronation of Edward VII. Much planning was required for this massive, international event with soldiers from all over the empire and m any other countries represented as well. Unfortunately, the King to be fell ill with what was initially thought to be lumbago, but turned out to be a life threatening infection around the appendix, before the coronation, which was subsequently delayed from 26th June until August 9th, but it was his express wish that the celebrations across the countries should in fact go ahead on the original date.

In New York a Coronation Ode was issued

"There are joy-bells over England, there are flags in London town;
There is bunting on the Channel where the fleets go up and down;
There are bon-fires alight, In the pageant of the night;
There are bands that blare for splendour and guns that speak for might;
For another King of England is coming to the Crown."

Oaks live for hundreds of years and grow to a massive girth. The Bowthorpe Oak (in Lincolnshire) had a 40-foot girth and hollowed itself out: in 1768 was recorded as seating 20 guests for dinner inside its trunk.

Other examples of historic famous oaks, elsewhere, in Wales and England:

The Bryn Gwalia Oak - Standing in the grounds of Bryn Gwalia Primary School in Mold, this Pedunculate Oak is estimated to be approximately 770 years old, making it a contemporary of Llywellyn Ap Gruffydd and King Edward I. The tree obviously predates everything around it and has therefore become a symbol of the community, signifying stability, strength and continuity through the generations. Many of the parents, grandparents and great grandparents of children now in the school remember playing around its huge girth and in the shade of its canopy and the school uses the ‘Bryn Gwalia Oak’ as its logo.

‘The Oak at the Gate of the Dead’ – Chirk Castle, near Wrexham: thought to date back to c. 802, the Great Oak had a 10m girth until 2010, when its trunk split asunder in cold weather. Located on Offa’s Dyke, near the Ceiriog Valley, it is said to be at a site where in 1165 Welsh forces ambushed an invading English army in the Battle of Crogen. There are also several other large old oaks in the parklands at Chirk Castle [source: p37, Heritage Trees in Wales’ by Archie Miles, 2012, Graffeg].

On the 5th of September 1651 the 21-year-old Charles II, defeated by Cromwell at Worcester, was on the run and hid for a whole day (with bread, wine and cheese supplies) in an oak in the grounds of Boscobel House in Shropshire - commemorated today by many public houses called ‘the Royal Oak’

Kett’s Oak near Norfolk was the focal point for an uprising against the enclosure of common ground. A force of 20,000 people marched on Norfolk Castle, where they met forces led by the Earl of Warwick. Kett was hanged for treason, but the tree survived as a place for radicals to assemble around and was called thereafter ‘The reformation oak’.