The Major Oak, a tree that grew to tower over Sherwood Forest as the Black Death swept England and the Wars of the Roses sundered it, shading huntsmen who spoke of Robin Hood and outlasting the reigns of six Henrys, six Georges and two Elizabeths, among others, has died.
The death of the tree, which was between 800 and 1,200 years old, was announced Thursday by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a British conservation charity.
There was no single cause but rather a web of factors, including tourism, climate change and damage from past efforts to save the tree, conservationists said.
The mighty oak, named after a soldier who retired to the area in the late 18th century, grew to gigantic proportions, with a twisted trunk whose circumference measured 36 feet.
Its legend nearly matched that: The tree’s wide, hollow trunk was said to be a place for Robin Hood to hide himself or his loot. The legend, however implausible even by the mythical status of Robin Hood, turned the tree into a tourist magnet.
But in the last five years, the tree has been struggling, conservationists said. In 2025, dendrometer devices that attached to the tree like a heart monitor showed “only murmurs of activity,” the society said in a report. This spring, when no buds or leaves appeared, the tree’s custodians declared it dead.
“We were waiting for any signs of life in the crown,” said Chloe Ryder, who manages the Sherwood Forest estate for the conservation society. “We really wanted to give it a chance.”
At its peak, the canopy spread 91 feet, but over the years the tree has been shrinking. Its roots had become depleted and the soil had become “hostile,” Ms. Ryder said.
The footfall from millions of visitors had compacted the sandy soil to a depth of nearly four feet deep, making it rock solid and starving the roots of water and nutrients, said Reg Harris, an arborist who specializes in ancient trees.
Mr. Harris was one of the last people to climb the tree with the specialists looking after it, and he said that misguided attempts to save the tree had harmed it over the years. In some of those efforts, iron, lead, fiberglass and even concrete were used to repair the tree. Then record heat waves and dry hot summers came to Britain, which the already weakened tree could not withstand.
“The climate is changing so fast in front of our eyes that these very old trees don’t seem to be able to keep up,” he said.
The earliest recorded document of the tree was created by Major Hayman Rooke, the soldier who retired to the area and whose name became the tree’s. His sketches of the oak, and the introduction of the rail system in the Victorian era, led to early tourism as visitors flocked to the forest.
Their interest was in part driven by the legend of the honorable thief, Robin Hood, but the sheer magnitude of the tree turned it into a phenomenon in its own right.
Mr. Harris, the arborist and a consummate dendrophile, has amassed a collection of antique picture postcards that show how the Major Oak had changed, along with the various interventions to save it.
About 120 years ago, after the tree was likely damaged by a storm, people fitted lead sheets to the tree in an effort to prevent water from seeping into the wounds, according to the conservation society and Mr. Harris.
A photograph of 19th-century visitors to the tree shows the gleaming metal. That was later replaced with fiberglass sheeting still visible today.
An image from around 1904 depicts the blacksmiths who made iron rods and braces to hold up the canopy. By the time modern conservationists discovered the damage this caused, the rods could not be removed.
In the 1970s, a fence was erected around the tree to protect the soil. At the same time, large wooden props that resembled telegraph poles were erected to support the tree, with more added in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, those were replaced by metal poles with cement bases, damaging the tree they were meant to save.
More recently, attempts to rehabilitate the soil with wood chip mulch created a breeding ground for armillaria, a tree-killing honey fungus.
All this, Mr. Harris said, led to a “web of causation” in the tree’s death.
Many people are still expected to visit the tree, even as the sun slowly bleaches its bark. Rob Brackley, a historical education tutor and medieval performer with a company called the Sherwood Outlaws — he dresses up as Robin Hood — said he would still lead tours to the bandit’s “spiritual home.”
“It’s sad to think that I’ll never see its canopy covered in leaves again,” he said. “It will still cast a shadow over the woodland floor.”
But even in death the Major Oak is at the center of an ecosystem that supports the Sherwood Forest, Mr. Harris said. Its survivors include its acorns, which have been planted all over Britain.
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