Following on from my ongoing interest in the Shire Oak (the tree, not the pub) and my request for photos of the preserved piece of the old tree in Shire Oak School,  I was contacted by several people with great information – The Edditer of The Bloxidge Tallygraph made a great contribution, as did the ever-resourceful Roger Jones and Julian Ward-Davies. In the next week or so I hope to revisit the subject in a bit more depth.

In the meantime, Rome-based ex-Brownhillian Mick P sent these great images to me by email, which were taken on a visit to the school a couple of years ago. It certainly seems to need the love of a good duster. I’m pleased the artifact survives after all this time, but I still wonder what the provenance of it was. The chunk of (presumably rotting) wood seems to have been stored for at least 50 years before being preserved – or did it sit somewhere else before the UDC donated it? If you have any information, please do comment or mail me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com.

Together, we are assembling a record of our history, bit by bit. I’m so grateful to you all.