The Wallace Oak
Quercus sp.
As told by Cha Halliday and Martin Beer
“when you lift the lid on memories and stories, people start telling their own……We feel that preserving this history and sharing this story allows people to feel like they’re all part of the same bigger story.” Martin Beer, Clan Hunter
A chance meeting at a Stories of People and Trees event outside Campbeltown with Margaret, the sister in law of Neil Lochiel of the Society of William Wallace, led to me uncovering this story and diving into the fascinating history of the Wallace Oak. I was privileged to spend a whole morning hearing from Martin Beer of the Clan Hunter and Cha Halliday of The Society of William Wallace, and it was exciting to see the remaining Wallace Oak section for myself. Apart from its legendary role in the final night of Sir William Wallace in Scotland, I find it fascinating to think that this tree – living until very recently – oversaw events from the 13th century right through to the late 1900s. In the context of ancient trees having very little formal protection – certainly not in the same way as ancient buildings – this story is as much about the way the tree was protected and preserved by a succession of local people as it is about the origin of its story.
Legend has it that the ‘Wallace Oak’ was where Sir William Wallace was chained up overnight on the 4th August 1305 after being captured, before being taken down to London to be tried for so-called “treason”, by a then foreign power. The oak remained in place in what would become Port Glasgow until it finally cracked open during a storm and collapsed on 29th June 1992. This incredible piece of history then lay undisturbed and without fanfare for many years until Cha and his friend Sean picked up its story from a book, and started trying to locate the remains of the oak, which they believed were still in the local area.
They then embarked on quite an adventure to get the tree recognised, protected and into its new home at Hunterston Castle, where it will be displayed on an open-ended loan from The Society of William Wallace.
I met Cha and Martin at Hunterston Castle, the ancestral seat of the Hunter Clan and the new home of the Wallace Oak.
The Legend of the Wallace Oak
Cha: The story which has been passed down goes like this. Once Wallace was captured by the Earl of Menteith at Robroyston in Glasgow, he was taken then to Earl’s stronghold, which was Dumbarton Castle, and kept overnight. The next morning he was taken across the River Clyde at the narrowest point, which is known as West Ferry. It's just where the road from Bishopton comes down. He was taken into what is now Port Glasgow along the old Roman road, and legend has it he was chained to this very oak tree on 4th August 1305 until the English troops arrived and he was handed over. Sir William Wallace spent some of his final hours in Scotland in close company with this oak.
After that he was transported to England. When he arrived in London, there were so many people in the streets that they couldn’t get him straight into the tower. They had all come to see this legendary figure, this giant of a man! As we know, Wallace wasn’t allowed to defend himself at his trial, but he did state that “I cannot be a traitor, for I owe him (The King of England) no allegiance. He is not my Sovereign; he never received my homage; and whilst life is in this persecuted body, he never shall receive it”.
In addition to the legend that has been passed down, we do have some historical records of this tree being referred to as the Wallace Oak. By 1768 it was the 13th Earl of Glencairn who owned much of the land around what is now known as Port Glasgow, and he noted that the Wallace Oak had been rotting for some time. He had it bored and filled with black pitch, thinking that it would save it, or at least to slow down the rot. When we started looking at the tree we found black pitch - you can still see it actually! He also records that, at a later time, he tried to rig up a system to stop the tree splitting, and keep it upright. Apparently root like structures soon started appearing from the upper limbs and came down and it started regrowing again. The tree lived on until the 1950s when people once again thought they’d try and save it – or at least stop it collapsing, this time by pouring concrete in the centre of it where it had split. The lime in the concrete actually hastened its demise, but it did live on for another 40 years or so. Everybody spoke of it as being the Wallace Oak: wedding pictures were taken next to it, first communion pictures, the football team got their picture taken next to it as well. Unfortunately in 1992 it cracked and opened right up in a storm.
The parish priest, Father Quinn, with the Oak after it fell in 1992.
JK: How did you personally come to get involved in trying to locate the Wallace Oak? What became of the Oak after it fell in 1992?
Cha: We first heard of it through a book. I had a pal called Sean, who was a keen motorcyclist, and we used to drive around Scotland looking at Scottish sites. He got a loan of a book we didn’t know at the time, by David R. Ross called ‘On the Trail of William Wallace’.
In it there is a short paragraph where the author visits an oak tree site in Port Glasgow. This made us laugh – we’d been driving hundreds of miles all over Scotland looking at historical sites, and here’s something to look at that’s down the road in Port Glasgow! By the time David went to visit the site the oak had come down, but he went anyway and asked a passing dog walker about the tree - he took David to the church in Port Glasgow and showed him the spot where the tree had stood just beside the driveway of the Holy Family Church.
When we read this account, we started to wonder what had become of the oak tree after that.
We learnt that when the fallen oak was cleared, most of the wood went to a farm in Port Glasgow, with an oil burner, and they burnt it.
One local man, Mr Joe Delaney, carved what’s known as a Padre Pio for himself from one of the branches. He ended up making a further 9, all with wood from the oak, because when the parish priests saw it they all wanted one!
Joe also planted some of the acorns in his daughter’s garden, so there’s a Wallace Oak descendant growing there too.
After the locals had chopped up the branches, and Joe had done his sculpting, the remainder of the tree was quite jagged and kids were always playing on it.
Martin: I was told off for that as a child, many a time. “Get off that tree!” It was the only big tree there at the time – I distinctly remember being shouted at by a priest –
JK: Was he shouting at you because you were climbing the Wallace Oak or just because you were climbing a tree?
Martin: I don’t know, I never asked him. Most likely if anyone was told off it was out of protecting the people rather than the tree!
Cha: The remains of the tree – now in two pieces - were taken to a scrapyard owned by David Smith of Bouverie Motors, within the old Gourock Ropeworks site. You can see it in this picture here:
Sean with Dr Mills at the location where the tree remains were found in the disused, overgrown scrapyard off Bouverie Street, Port Glasgow.
Finding the Wallace Oak
So in 2013 we read David R. Ross’s book and learnt of the tree, then in 2014 we put an appeal in the local paper, the Greenock Telegraph, saying ‘does anybody know about the Wallace Oak, can anyone tell us where it is now?’ We also wanted to find out about the chain, because it seemed that one chain or other had always been symbolically attached to the tree and had been adopted, repainted, replaced a few times in its history. We got quite a few responses to the appeal, and one was like a treasure map, it went “park your car here, walk along this embankment, go up the embankment here, the chainlink fence stops to become a metal fence but the chain link fence is bent up and you go in there, go unto the wall, walk 130 yards and you’ll find the tree remains up against the wall”. We followed the instructions – and we found the first section of the oak! – at that point we didn’t know there was a second section, it was all covered with foliage. We couldn’t believe what we’d found, we were saying ‘oh my god, this is the tree, it's the tree!’
We also heard that one of the priests had taken the chain off the tree when it came down, and he was now in a nursing home, sadly he was suffering Alzheimers. We didn’t know to what extent his condition would be affecting him, maybe we’d be lucky and he’ll remember some stories about the tree. We visited and we ended up having a really nice chat – but he didn’t remember anything about the tree or the chain.
Around that time we also spoke to a more recently appointed priest, but he said the tree was only around 400 years old, nothing to do with that older stuff. We were a bit disappointed, as that would mean it was not the legendary Wallace Oak, but thought we’d carry on trying to uncover more of the story.
My friend Neil was in the Society of William Wallace, and he suggested that we come along to one of the meetings and tell everyone what we’d found. So Sean and I went up to a committee meeting, and they were absolutely fascinated. None of them knew about it apart from all they’d read in David’s book. They were all really impressed with our find and by the end of the meeting, Sean and I had joined the Society. They said that they would back us if we wanted to do more with the story.
The committee wanted to see the tree too, so the then convenor Duncan Fenton came along to view it, and while we were there the owner of the scrapyard, David Smith, said he’d like to donate the tree to The Society of William Wallace. We thought ‘well that’s fantastic - but it is still only legend. We cannae say this is a Wallace monument until we can prove it’. So the Society engaged with a dendrochronologist, Dr Coralie Mills, to examine the remains of the Wallace Oak. There are only 10 dendrochronologists in Britain, and 3 in Scotland, but she came through from Edinburgh and inspected it and took some samples for tree-ring analysis. Coralie, in summarising her results, has said ‘While the tree-ring analysis could only reveal the age of the surviving solid upper parts of the tree, as originating in the late 18th century, from regrowth after the Earl of Glencairn’s intervention, the fact that the tree was hollow by the 1760s indicated that it was already an ancient oak by that time. From other old oakwood sites in Scotland such as Cadzow near Hamilton, we know that oaks can be well over 500 years in age before they reach that hollow stage so it was entirely plausible that the oak had been in existence by the 13th century, before Wallace’s capture.’ That was good enough for us at the Wallace Society – we felt we could state that we were the proud finders of the legendary Wallace Oak.
But then we had to decide what to do with it! It had lain unprotected and undisturbed in a scrapyard for many years by then. We decided we needed to speak to Historic Environment Scotland. At this stage we also got quite a lot of media coverage. We made about 11 national newspapers and did two interviews on Radio Scotland as well. There seemed to be quite a lot of people talking about it, and we went up to Edinburgh and met Historic Environment Scotland. We suggested we’d like to put it in Newark Castle. Our idea was to preserve it, keep it near the Clyde, and allow people to visit it. We felt it would have a lot of visitors. People would visit from the Scottish diaspora who feel they have an ancestral connection to Wallace through his brother’s descendants, or maybe people who’d seen Braveheart. Many people were already coming up to the tree remains where they were lying, whispering ‘can I touch it?’ So, we wanted to display the tree for everyone to see – apart from anything else, we just love this story, and we wanted everyone to be as excited as we were!
We urgently needed the state of the tree to be checked out, because we were not tree experts at all. Rob Thompson, a conservator, came out to see how the tree was doing, and assessed the structure and moisture levels in the wood. He actually sent a temperature and humidity data logger which is still on the tree – it continuously takes the atmosphere, moisture and other information.
Discovering the second part of the Oak
It was now Winter, and the area around the tree and the yard fence was much less densely covered because all the foliage had dropped from the surrounding bushes and trees. We were down there one day with Dr Mills, and Stuart was standing by the fence just by the air raid shelters, when he suddenly cried out ‘is that another big bit of tree, just out there?’ Dr Mills took a look, and said ‘oh my goodness! That’s the other half of this tree! I can see where it was cut – it’s the other half of this!’. We took a lot of photos – now we had found the final remaining two sections of the tree and this second section actually had the chain within the trunk! To think that I had probably walked past the abandoned section of tree many times over all those years, without even realising.
Moving the tree
Now we really needed to move fast, because we had some local and national newspapers onto it, and we need to get the tree moved to somewhere safe, quickly. The first thing we needed to work out was how we would even get it out of the scrapyard. The scrapyard owner had donated it to us, but now we had to move it! Neil was working on an Inverclyde regeneration project at the time, he made a few phone calls and through a few friends found a company called Union Projects. It was a young guy who ran the company, and he said he’d love to be involved with the project, no payment needed. That was amazing, because The Society of William Wallace is a Registered Charity with little funds, and shortly after the Union Projects team came down to move it. One morning at 6am, hi vis on, they moved their machinery in via some waste ground and lifted the first section of the tree onto a big pallet.
Of course, the pallet immediately snapped because of the weight of the tree, it was sodden, as you can imagine. But they got it on the lorry, and returned later that day for the second section from the scrapyard. A local company in Port Glasgow, The Trust, suggested that if we stored it, it would dry out slowly, and they gave us a unit to store it in. The company that supported the move was called Wallace Engineering – you couldn’t make it up! Even when we got it there to the storage unit it was tricky to get it in the door, so yet another friend of a friend turned up with a forklift to help us get it inside. Every stage of the move of this fragile and important tree section was managed by the generosity of local contractors and friends who stepped in to help.
We had been in touch with Historic Environment Scotland but they hadn’t moved the project on at all, so the tree remained in the unit there for another 4 years, til last year in fact. We even tried to donate the tree, thinking that we had done our bit in saving the only tangible link to Sir William Wallace. By this time we had started to get gentle suggestions from the unit owners that the tree would need to find a new home, as the units were getting redeveloped. I felt upset about the lack of progress on caring for the tree remains, and decided that I had to focus all my energy on building the monument, which would be in Port Glasgow by the church where the tree grew.
Neil Lochiel, Cha Halliday, Stuart Duncan after the unveiling of the tree memorial at Holy Family Church, Port Glasgow
JK: You unveiled the monument to the Wallace Oak last year in Port Glasgow – how did you go about funding and building that?
The smaller piece of oak was in a really bad condition and had started to fall apart. We decided that if we divided it up and sold it in small pieces, with a commemorative certificate and a replica wax seal, we could raise money to build a monument. Again, lots of people helped us. Dr Mills gave her permission to name her on the certificate, and an artist member of The Society of William Wallace, the late Andrew Hillhouse, gave us his artwork for the project. We raised over £17,000 through donations and the selling of small pieces of the decayed piece of tree over the course of one year, and in the end all bar £500 from a local company of our funding for the monument came from the public – no grants, lottery funding or anything, we did it all ourselves. We had no idea how expensive it would be even getting the groundwork for this monument done. We simply couldn’t afford it when we looked into it. Then an old Tartan Army pal from Edinburgh got into touch, asking why we hadn’t approached his family business for a quote? He came out to have a look at the plans, and said he’d do it at cost. I couldn’t believe it, coming through from Edinburgh for the work too.
Even the chain on the monument was donated to us. A guy from Ferguson Marine shipyard contacted us, asking if we wanted a piece of chain from the shipyard if we were looking for something that was clearly quite old. He said he had a piece in his yard that was over 100 years old and he just gave it to us.
The monument was designed by a local man, Douglas Nicholson, he’d been at school a couple of years below me. He asked if we were happy for him to go away and try drawing a more modern take on our ideas, which involved having a split oak, with the chain referenced and with flat ends so we could engrave onto it. He came back with the perfect design. Whiteside Memorials was commissioned to create the memorial from the design. We decided to run a competition in the local schools to write a 4 line poem, with the winning poem being engraved onto the monument. The other text tells the story of what the monument is about, and records that the people of Port Glasgow cared for this oak for centuries.
The Wallace Oak memorial with poem engraved, and information lectern, at Holy Family Church in Port Glasgow.
When we unveiled the monument at a local ceremony, we expected about 30 people – but over 200 folk turned out to be there. We laid flowers, and Alastair McDonald and Ted Christopher performed some songs. Now, there are regularly flowers laid at the monument – I think the extra publicity has drawn it back into the community’s psyche again.
JK: It just shows the impact that it has had. You’ve given all these people a chance to connect with their own history and local heritage. When you realised what it was, and the age of the tree, how did it feel to realise you were in charge of this incredible artefact?
Cha: Well, it wasn’t just me – it was a whole team of us. The various priests of the Holy Family church on whose ground the tree latterly stood have been brilliant. Stuart and Neil from the Society, they’ve achieved so much with their writing to people. My friends helped me to keep going – we just had to keep battling away to get it the recognition it deserved. Although we had commemorated it with the monument, we were disappointed that we couldn’t do more to protect the actual tree sections than we’d done, it was just sitting in storage – and then this guy [Martin Beer] arrived at the unveiling and suggested the Wallace Oak may be able to be housed at Hunterston Castle! So we organised for Rob Thompson to come back, and he advised us how to move it without damaging it too much, then what materials to coat it in to preserve it, which we’ve done. George Kempik built the wee base that it sits on, and here it is in front of you now - this is a fantastic room for it to be in.
JK: Martin, when you offered to house the tree, did you just take an interest because you’d grown up in the area?
Martin: I maybe romanticise it a bit too much but, as the Clan Hunter, we were the hereditary keepers of the royal forests. It was the Hunter’s job to supply meat for the royal table, and sport for the likes of King Robert the Bruce, since the invitation by King David 1 and Royal appointment to hunt for the King of Scotland. This responsibility involved maintaining and protecting the fertile woodland in the area, and this is another tree for us to look after; not just any other tree but a link to hundreds of years of history. When I was growing up, the Wallace tree was just there as part of the landscape, we’d climb on it – we knew it was called the Wallace tree but to us as kids that was just a name. Then as an adult you think about the significance of it. I believe that in Scotland Wallace was given safe passage, but I don’t think this was respected once he was travelling down to London. He didn’t have to be treated well because to the powers that be in London, he was a terrorist. So it’s hard to imagine what that day would have been like for Wallace.
After hearing Neil mention about looking for home for the Oak during the speeches at the unveiling of the new monument, I approached the Wallace Oak project member Stuart about how I knew of the tree and that I may have an option for housing the remains, it’s out of town but it’s an option. I went on to approach the Clan Chief, Madam Pauline Hunter about it and, after a successful meeting at Hunterston with Neil from the Society of William Wallace she was fully in support of Hunterston offering the tree a home.
Being the ‘Wallace’ Oak
JK: It’s thrilling enough to know for certain that this tree would have been present and living when Sir William Wallace passed through what is now Port Glasgow on his way to London – but it’s also hard to get away from all the evidence that does point to it being the very tree Wallace was chained to.
Cha: There are lots of things that fit in with the Wallace story. The fact that it has engulfed chains on it, and people have maintained them over the years. Also the story about the pitch being poured into it. Dendro results by a colleague of Dr Mills show that native oak was felled for Newark Castle towards the end of the 16th century, but this local oak tree only a few hundred metres up the hill from the build site was left standing. I have to wonder did they also know the Wallace connections? We feel that with everything put together, along with the oral tradition of the history of the tree, we’ve amassed enough evidence to say that this is the ‘Wallace Oak’.
We know that there were other acorns kept from the tree, alongside the ones that Joe planted. What we’re hoping to do is eventually track down one of the children of this tree. We will connect it by planting one down here so Wallace Oak has got a wee grandchild. When people see it we can say ‘well that there was grown from one of the acorns of the Wallace Oak’. It’s a question of tracking down the tree. The right time to be able to get it, and we already have a specialist waiting in the wings to help us with the propagation.
Hunterston Castle
Martin: The Clan Hunter association membership are so delighted to be involved with preserving the tree. We’ve Hunters living world wide, and a lot of them are overjoyed to be involved with such a culturally important part of history, and a project that raises the profile of the historic role of the Hunters. When we were here on site at Hunterston, painting the conservation paint onto the tree, so many people would stop and chat and ask about the story. There was one guy who just followed me about all day, watching what I was doing! He was fascinated. I also think that when you lift the lid on memories and stories, people start telling their own – one of the estate tenants here is an ex farmer and he started reminiscing about how they’d had to get a tractor to haul out the last tree that had come down on the farm…..the whole story came out! So we feel that preserving this history and sharing this story allows people to feel like they’re all part of the same bigger story.
Trees in our DNA
JK: It’s interesting how a tree can pique someone’s interest; you were talking about how people who have been involved in moving and preserving the tree like to commune with the tree for a while. Maybe people feel more of a connection with a tree monument than they do with a built monument from modern materials – perhaps because it was a living thing?
Martin: I think, for a lot of people, trees are the memory of everything from what we used to throw on the fire to keep warm, to what we played on as kids. I think there is something very evolutionary about trees, it’s the same with fire: it’s engrained in our DNA that these things are important to us. We now also understand just how important trees really are to us environmentally.
When we were working on the tree here on the castle grounds, preparing it to come inside – painting it, preserving the chain, getting it onto the pallet – there were a few times when we had to climb over it, just like when we were little. Only this time we had to do it, not just for play. And finally, we didn’t get told off for it!
The Wallace Oak will be opened to the public at Hunterston Castle in Spring 2023 – follow The Society of William Wallace to keep up to date with the latest news and to visit the tree yourself.
www.thesocietyofwilliamwallace.com
A note from Dr Coralie Mills on the identification of the exact species of Oak: It is not possible to distinguish the two native species of oak found in Scotland based on wood anatomy. I can only say it is Quercus sp. (that means an oak species) The wood of our two naturally occurring oaks, Quercus petraea and Quercus robur, are indistinguishable. You need living leaves and acorns to identify which species of oak, and even then it is difficult, especially as our two oak species hybridise. We do have the 1992 Greenock Telegraph photo of the oak with leaves on, but the resolution isn’t good enough to see the leaf shape.