Legend
The beheaded oaks
Mourning in timber.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Brick ruin among ancient pollard oaks
- Legend from
- Bradgate tradition
- Tone
- Melancholy
The trees lost their heads too.
Lady Jane Grey grew up at Bradgate. Tradition says that when she was executed in 1554 the foresters lopped the tops off the park's oaks in mourning. Wikipedia calls it a tradition and notes pollarding was normal practice; Figures of Speech says the story 'may owe more to later romanticism'.