Shire oak

This article is about the folklore meaning. For the tree that formerly stood in Headingley, see Shire Oak (Headingley). For the place in the West Midlands, see Shire Oak, Walsall.

The English folk legend of a shire oak, under the spreading limbs of which the ancient Anglo-Saxon open-air folkmoots and things were held,^[1] is a feature of Merry England:

"In olden times the rude hustings, with its noisy surging crowds, was the old popular mode of appeal to the people, voter and voteless, a remnant of Saxon times when men gathered under the shire-oak..."^[2]

The Shire Oak legendarium has resulted in a number of toponyms in present-day England. Oaks were often markers where three shires came together, as "Three-shire Oaks" at some of the tripoints of England.

In Essex, a venerable "shire oak" was identified at Kelvedon.^[3] Shire Oak is a section of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in which county the Shire-Oak Colliery was excavated near Worksop.

Shire Oak is a suburban area within the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, West Midlands, recognised by the Ordnance Survey.^[4] Shire Oak School is in Walsall Wood, West Midlands, where there is a Shire Oak Quarry and a Shire Oak Reservoir,^[5] and there are numerous examples in England of a "Shire Oak Road" or "Shire Oak Street".

Providing a suitably Anglophone toponym, Shire Oak is a neighborhood of San Antonio, Texas and Shireoak Drive is a road in Houston.

Notes

1. Charles Mosley, The Oak: its natural history, antiquity & folk-lore, 1910.
2. George Howell, One man, one vote (National Liberal Pamphlet, 15), in Foreign & Commonwealth Pamphlets, 1880.
3. K.A. Rodwell, The Prehistoric and Roman Settlement at Kelvedon, Essex, 1988.
4. Get Outside Ordnance Survey: Shire Oak, Walsall
5. Shire Oak reservoir Archived 2011-07-23 at the Wayback Machine