AN OAK FOR THE AGES

Since prehistoric times, a giant tree had slumbered in the Fenland soil, until, in 2012, a farmer stumbled across it. Now, skilled craftsmen have transformed the oak into a 'Table for the Nation', as a jubilee tribute to the Queen, writes Rosanna Morris

- Rosanna Morris

On a spring day a decade ago, as preparations were underway to mark Her Majesty the Queen's 60-year reign, a farmworker driving a tractor across a Norfolk field felt the plough hit something. Something large, something solid. There was no tang of metal striking stone but a deep, low whump. A groan from the depths.

The tractor driver knew what it would be. For centuries in this part of the world - the flat, low-lying land of East England - those cultivating the soil have often connected with these cumbersome objects buried beneath the claggy earth. Climbing down from the tractor and investigating further, the driver's suspicions were confirmed - the plough had struck a tree. But this was no ordinary tree. It was an oak tree that had rested in this spot for 5,000 years, an ancient remnant of one of the many forests that once covered Britain. Scraping back the dark, peaty soil in which it had been preserved for millennia would reveal a coal-black, wet surface of a huge, branchless trunk. Part of an oak tree like none seen living in modern times.

The six-tonne hulk was dragged from the field, and farm manager Martin Hammond called in the experts. "I'd never seen anything like it," says Hamish Low, Britain's foremost expert on black oak, or bog oak, who has dedicated 30 years to perfecting how to process this unique timber. Hamish is often called when bog oak is discovered in the Fens of East Anglia, and he travelled from Kent to assess the find. This time, what he saw astounded him. "I couldn't believe what I was looking at."