HeroLegendary
The Queen's Oak
Beneath a great oak, a young princess learned the crown was hers.
Check opening times
- What's there
- A replacement oak in Hatfield Park
- Legend from
- 1558
- Best time
- Park open February to October
- Tone
- Light-hearted
In the park beside you, a young Elizabeth was supposedly sitting under an oak when riders arrived to tell her she was Queen of England.
Before she became queen, Princess Elizabeth was kept under watch at the old palace at Hatfield during her half-sister Mary's reign, and she is said to have liked sitting beneath a great oak in the park. Tradition holds that she was sitting under it, reading her Bible or perhaps eating an apple, when messengers rode from London in November 1558 to tell her Mary was dead and she was queen, and that she answered with a line from the Psalms about the Lord's doing. The tree became a treasured relic, fenced and propped, visited by Queen Victoria, and finally removed as a stump in 1978. Elizabeth II planted its successor in 1985.