3.8- The Beaumont Tree

The heart of a highwayman sprouts a tree with healing powers. But why was he buried there?

The Heart of the Highwayman

The scion of the Beaumont Tree

The centre of this story, or the heart, belongs to an unnamed highwayman, who was shot on the road just outside of Silsoe in Bedfordshire. Local legend has it that who ever shot the brigand cut a stake from an elm fence post and drove it through the highwayman’s heart before burying him in an unmarked grave by the side of the road.

In local lore the elm which stood by the roadside for hundreds of years was a product of this burial, with the massive tree rooting from the heart of the highwayman. No wonder then that the tree was reputed to have strange powers.

Folk Medicine

A piece of the Beaumont Tree with hair and nail embedded.

Over the years, the Beaumont Tree has been credited with possessing many curative properties. Strands of hair if nailed to the tree at midnight were said to either cure or prevent the ague, otherwise known as ‘marsh fever’. Sadly the Beaumont Tree fell victim to the plague of Dutch Elm Disease which swept through the UK and nothing now remains of the original tree or the scion it produced, except for the small section kept in the archives at The Museum of Anthropology and Archeology at Cambridge University.