One Tree Hill is a defining feature of

Honor Oak Honor Oak is an inner suburban area principally of the London Borough of Lewisham, with part in the London Borough of Southwark. It is named after the oak tree on One Tree Hill that Elizabeth I is reputed to have picnicked under. Overview One Tr ...

, mostly in

London Borough of Southwark The London Borough of Southwark ( ) in South London forms part of Inner London and is connected by bridges across the River Thames to the City of London and London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council areas ...

but parts also in the

London Borough of Lewisham Lewisham () is a London boroughs, London borough in south-east London; it forms part of Inner London. The principal settlement of the borough is Lewisham. The local authority is Lewisham London Borough Council, based in Catford. The Prime Merid ...

. It includes a 7 hectare public park, local nature reserve and Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, Grade 1, which is owned and managed by Southwark Council. Its name, and that of the Honor Oak area, derive from the Oak of Honor, a tree on the hill which marked the southern boundary of the Norman

Honour of Gloucester Honour (British English) or honor (American English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of socia ...

. One Tree Hill was once a part of a much larger landscape called the

Great North Wood The Great North Wood was a natural oak woodland that started south-east of central London and scaled the Norwood Ridge. At its full extent, the wood's boundaries stretched almost as far as Croydon and as far north as Camberwell. It had occa ...

. The

London Wildlife Trust London Wildlife Trust (LWT), founded in 1981, is a local nature conservation charity for Greater London. It is one of 46 members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (known as The Wildlife Trusts), each of which is a local nature conservatio ...

is currently working with

Southwark Council Southwark London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Southwark in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London. History There have previously been a numbe ...

and the Friends of One Tree Hill to improve the site for wildlife, as a part of its Great North Wood Project.

History

The hill's Oak of Honor once marked the southern boundary of the Norman

. It was later owned by the Abbots of Bermondsey, until it was confiscated by the monarchy during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. According to legend, Queen

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is ...

rested under an oak at the summit on her way to visit

Lewisham Lewisham () is an area of southeast London, England, south of Charing Cross. It is the principal area of the London Borough of Lewisham, and was within the historic county of Kent until 1889. It is identified in the London Plan as one of ...

in 1602. The current oak is the third on the site, planted in 1905. Before the end of the eighteenth century, the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

built a semaphore station on the top of the hill to signal when ships were sighted in the Channel, and it was used as a beacon point by the Admiralty during the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

. In 1896 the hill was fenced off by a local golf club, but this led to large scale protests, occupation and removal of the fences by local members of the

Selborne Society The Selborne Society or Selborne League is Britain's oldest national conservation organization. It was formed in November 1885 to "perpetuate the name and interests of Gilbert White, the Naturalist of Selborne", and followed the philosophy of obse ...

and Society for the Protection of Birds (later the RSPB). In 1905 the site was compulsorily purchased by the new Camberwell Borough Council. The church of St Augustine was built on the north-east side of the hill between 1872 and 1900. It is fenced off from the public park. In 1957

John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...

described the view from the top as "better than that from

Parliament Hill Parliament Hill (french: Colline du Parlement, colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern banks of the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Its Gothic revival suite of buildings, and their archit ...

". Adjacent to the hill is the Honor Oak Reservoir, the largest underground brick reservoir in the world when finished in 1909, and it remains the largest in Europe.

Ecology

The steep hill is wooded with open grassland at the top. The site has many ancient trees, but the main ones are hybrid black-poplar and London plane, the result of former landscaping. There are also

wild service tree ''Sorbus torminalis'', with common names wild service tree, chequers, and checker tree, is a species of tree in the mountain ash or rowan genus (''Sorbus'') of the rose family (Rosaceae), that is native to Europe, parts of northern Africa and we ...

s and

midland hawthorn ''Crataegus laevigata'', known as the Midland hawthorn, English hawthorn, woodland hawthorn, or mayflower, is a species of hawthorn native to western and central Europe, from Great Britain (where it is typically found in ancient woodland and old ...

s. The ground flora includes bluebells, heath grass and compact rush.

Access

There is access from Honor Oak Park and Brenchley Gardens.

References

External links

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One Tree Hill Allotment Society
Large Allotment Site on Eastern side of One Tree Hill {{LNRs in Greater London Local nature reserves in Greater London Nature reserves in the London Borough of Southwark Honor Oak