REGARDING the article in last week’s Guardian regarding the oak tree in Bostock. The suggestion that the original tree was planted by Osmer is unfounded and unlikely to be true. In fact he may never have lived in Bostock.

That he was born in 1025 is similarly unfounded and unlikely to be true as no dates of birth are available that early.

I don’t believe the oak tree portrayed is that old. The picture postcard is most probably the old oak which was felled in the late 1887, and very shortly before that.

The ropes suggest it was in a precarious state at the time.

The tree shown does seem to be the same tree as painted by Kenyon in the late 1700s, a certainty in my view. My book Bostock: a History of a Cheshire Village and it’s people is available as a Kindle ebook or from Amazon.

Tony Bostock Cheshire