No new leaves emerged on the Major Oak this spring. The 1,200-year-old tree in Sherwood Forest, said to have sheltered Robin Hood and his Merry Men, is dead — smothered by the very visitors who came to pay homage.
The RSPB, which manages the forest, confirmed the death on 18 June 2026, saying the beloved oak produced its final burst of leaves in 2025 and had been noticeably bare this year. Conservationists were “gutted” to announce the end of a tree that had stood since before the Norman Conquest, outliving the Tower of London and even the concept of zero.
“The 1,200-year-old Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, legendary hideout of Robin Hood, is dead, killed by too many visitors.”
According to legend, the swashbuckling outlaw hid from the Sheriff of Nottingham inside the tree’s massive hollow trunk. That fame drew millions of sightseers for 230 years, after the antiquarian Major Hayman Rooke mentioned it in his 1790 work Descriptions and Sketches of some Remarkable Oaks. The tree was named in his honour; previously it was called the Cockpen Tree, the Queen Oak and Robin Hood’s Oak.
The footsteps of those millions compacted the soil around its roots “as solid as concrete”, preventing rainwater, oxygen and nutrients from reaching them. By the 1970s the local council had fenced the tree off, but the damage was done. In 1982 vandals set a fire in its hollow trunk, nearly burning it down.
Well-meaning structural interventions — props, bracing chains, fibreglass sheets, concrete infilling and fire-retardant paint — also proved detrimental. “The soil around the Major Oak was under far greater stress than anyone initially realised,” said Simon Parfey, managing director of soil microbiology testing specialists SoilBioLab, which has helped care for the tree since 2021. “Our early surveys revealed a root system that had been quietly struggling for a long time due to naturally poor soil and heavy ground compaction. … The damage, it now seems, was already too deeply entrenched to fully reverse.”
A series of five exceptionally hot and drought-y summers, most notably July 2022 when the UK recorded 40C, may have been the final blow. “Given the longevity of a tree such as this, it’s impossible to pinpoint a single cause for its decline,” said Reg Harris, director of Urban Forestry Ltd, which has been monitoring its health. “The range of factors affecting it over such a long period of time is very wide and varied, including 200 years of tourist footfall.”
Chloe Ryder, the RSPB’s manager at Sherwood Forest, said: “It’s devastating to accept. … What we discovered was a surprising and grave situation; a strangled and starved root system in total disconnect to its surrounding environment.”
The oak weighed an estimated 23 tons, with a girth of 33ft and a canopy of 92ft — the biggest oak in Britain. Now it stands as a monument to a legend, and a warning: sometimes love kills.