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 ...

, 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 the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council ...

but with parts also in the

London Borough of Lewisham Lewisham ( ) is a London boroughs, London borough in south-east London, England. 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 ...

. 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 The feudal barony of Gloucester or Honour of Gloucester was one of the largest of the mediaeval English feudal baronies in 1166, comprising 279 knight's fees, or manors. The constituent landholdings were spread over many counties. The location o ...

. 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 occ ...

. The

London Wildlife Trust London Wildlife Trust is an English wildlife charity based in London. Founded in 1981, London Wildlife Trust is one of 46 members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (known as The Wildlife Trusts), each of which is a local nature charity ...

is currently working with

Southwark Council Southwark London Borough Council, also known as Southwark 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 London. The council has been under Labour major ...

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. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudo ...

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 counties of England, historic county of Kent until 1889. It is identified in ...

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 that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

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 {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

. 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 and Society for the Protection of Birds (later the

RSPB The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a Charitable_organization#United_Kingdom, charitable organisation registered in Charity Commission for England and Wales, England and Wales and in Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, ...

). 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 architect ...

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

Parliament Hill Parliament Hill (), colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern bank of the Ottawa River that houses the Parliament of Canada in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. It accommodates a suite of Gothic revival buildings whose ...

". 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 trees 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 o ...

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