Why are there so many oaks at Oakbrook?
by Director David Lambert
One of the really striking things about Oakbrook is that when you look into the valley, there are so many wonderful old oaks not just in the hedgerows but standing in the permanent pasture. The reason they are there is not just a jay burying an acorn; they were deliberately planted.
Oakbrook Farm was always part of the land belonging to what is now Hawkwood. As early as 1771 a Mr Capel was the owner of a Jacobean house called The Grove on the site of Hawkwood (renamed in the 1930s). Mr Capel was the owner of Capel’s Mill one of the many highly profitable mills in the five valleys around Stroud. The original house burnt down between 1839 and 1842 and was replaced with the existing Victorian Gothic mansion, designed for William Capel by George Basevi, architect of the Sub Rooms and the wings at Painswick.
Over the centuries, the Capels had gradually acquired land and when the estate was sold in 1914 it contained some 822 acres. As well as providing an income through tenant farms, the estate formed the setting for the mansion; and for both the Jacobean and the Victorian house, the view southward to Stroud and the Cotswold escarpment would have been highly prized.
The Capels never had such airs and graces as to turn out their tenants, grub up all the hedgerows and create a landscape park, but they did want to create a parkland character to that view. And that was why they planted the scattering of oaks, the great beech above the Haven, the enormous Wedding Oak by the clapper bridge, and the magnificent plane tree in Lovedays Mead. Most of the oaks are mid-nineteenth century, but some of the trees date from the eighteenth century and they give Oakbrook much of its unique spirit of place.
