The Beggars' Oak was a great tree which stood on the Bagot estate near Abbots Bromley, a meeting place for itinerants. It was believed to be around 1000 years old when it had to be removed in about the 1940s.
From A History of British Forest Trees published 1842:
The Beggars' Oak, in [Bagot Park, Staffordshire, the seat of Lord Bagot,] is also a fresh and vigorous tree, with a trunk upwards of twenty-seven feet in circumference at five feet from the ground ; it contains eight hundred and seventy-seven cubic feet of timber, and Sir T. D. Lauder informs us would have produced, according to the price offered for it in 1812, 202l. 14s. 9d.
From Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum published 1838:
The roots rise above the ground in a very extraordinary manner, so as to furnish a natural seat for the beggars chancing
to pass along the pathway near it;
