Chêne d'Allouville

In the middle of Allouville-Bellefosse, a farming village of the Pays de Caux, an oak stands opposite the porch-tower of the church of Saint-Quentin and has been turned, quite literally, into a church of its own. The trunk is completely hollow and roughly conical, and inside it are two tiny chapels stacked one above the other. Estimates put the tree's age at around 1,200 years, which would make it a contemporary of Charlemagne; a local story insists it was planted in 911, the year Normandy was founded, but that is tradition rather than record.

The chapels date from 1696, when the parish priest, the Abbé Jacques Delalande du Détroit, placed an image of the Virgin in a fissure of the trunk and then had the hollow fitted out. The lower room is dedicated to Notre-Dame de la Paix, Our Lady of Peace, and holds a small altar; above it sits a narrow cell known as the Hermit's Chamber. The priest also sealed the tree's cracks with wooden shingles and crowned it with a little bell turret and an iron cross. In the nineteenth century villagers panelled the interiors, reclad the trunk in shingles and added the wooden staircase with a balustrade that winds around the outside and gives the tree its unmistakable silhouette.

The oak has survived more than its share of threats. During the Revolution, in 1793, it was threatened with destruction as a religious symbol and was saved by a villager, Jean-Baptiste Bonheure. The Archbishop of Rouen blessed it after restoration in 1854; lightning struck it in 1912, and a storm in 1938 broke five of its limbs. Since 1988 a discreet metal frame has helped carry the remaining crown. The tree was listed as a picturesque natural monument in 1932 and received the "Remarkable Tree of France" label in 2001. What makes it moving is the combination: a living oak, still leafing every spring, that has been cared for by a single parish for more than three centuries as both relic and sanctuary.

Getting there

The oak stands in the village centre of Allouville-Bellefosse in Seine-Maritime, near the market town of Yvetot, at the junction of the D33, D34 and D110 roads. The nearest large town on the coast is Fécamp, about 28 km away, and Rouen lies some 50 km to the south-east. The closest airport is Deauville Normandie (DOL), about 46 km away across the Seine estuary.