Beggar's Oak

View of a majestic oak standing tall in a clearing visited by wild goats. The author describes this tree and its surroundings as follows:

The beggar’s oak stands in Bagot’s Park, about four miles from Blithfield, the seat of the Right Honorable Lord Bagot, near Litchfield. The scenery which surrounds it, is singularly interesting and appropriate—the stillness of antique trees and forest glades is relieved by animated groups of deer, whose characteristics peculiarly suit the features of the scene; and by a still more striking race of wild goats, originally presented, by Richard the Second, to one of Lord Bagot’s ancestors.

The beggar’s oak is supposed to have received its name from the accommodation it is so well calculated to afford in its ample canopy, “star-proof,” and its moss-grown roots, to the weary mendicants who may in former times have been tempted to seek the shade of its branches, for repose or shelter. Its girth at five feet from the ground is twenty feet; the circumference of the roots which project above the surface of the ground is sixty-eight feet; and the branches extend about sixteen yards from the trunk in every direction.