A Great Oak Table in the Woods

Crowdfunding a dream

We’re raising funds to honour a 500-year-old oak tree which fell in a storm. From this monumental tree, we’re building an inspirational Table, the longest table in the world crafted from a single English Oak Tree, a Table that will itself endure for another 500 years.

The Table will be located within Pigwiggen Wood, a magical small woodland on the edge of Dartmoor. We hope that this will become more than just a local community project. We hope that even for those who may never visit in person, the Great Oak Table will serve as a potent symbol of a kinder, more hospitable world.

About Pigwiggen Wood

Pigwiggen Wood hasn’t always been so idyllic. When we bought this patch of low grade land at auction eighteen years ago, it was a mess! Old tyres, decaying plastic chemical fertiliser bags, and EVEN a leaking tar barrel had been dumped in the stream. Rusty barbed wire lurked in the undergrowth, and brambles and bracken ran amok, suffocating the baby trees, bluebells, and other wild flowers of the forest floor.

Nevertheless, we fell in love with this little hidden valley, and over the years, with generous help from wonderful volunteers, we’ve gently managed it for biodiversity, learning as we go along. It’s thrilling to witness what happens if you give nature a helping hand. Every year more and more species make their home in Pigwiggen Wood. We have dormice, bees, frogs, tawny owls, and badgers, not to mention violet ground beetles, terracotta hedgehog mushrooms (edible!) early purple orchids, dragonflies, and that revered plant of mediaeval herbalists, wood betony.

Today, the whole woodland exudes enchantment.

Sharing the Magic

We have always shared this special place with others, gently celebrating the seasons of the year, and enjoying feeding our volunteers. We’ve fed fifty hundred people, brewed countless cups of tea, baked a zillion cakes, and created delicious Pigwiggen cocktails from foraged ingredients. YUM!

The Story of a Tudor Oak Tree

Long ago, a little acorn fell to the ground and sent out a tentative shoot. For five hundred years this oak continued to grow ever larger. It was a field oak on an old estate in mid-Devon. Wars, plagues, and politics passed it by.

A mature oak can support more than 2,000 different species. Can you imagine the birds that sang in its branches? Or the animals that sheltered beneath its canopy? The people who gathered, the children who played, the lovers who kissed, the small creatures whose entire lives were lived out on its trunk, branches, leaves? Hundreds and hundreds of years of lives. What stories must be held in the grain, in its rings of growth!

Tragically, at the dawn of the 21st century, the tree fell victim to a powerful storm. But its life was not yet over. Its owner couldn’t bear to have the vast carcass chopped up for firewood. For fifteen years, the tree rested quietly awaiting its unknown fate.

We heard about this fantastic tree, and this is what we found when we first went to meet our Tudor Oak:

Its owner would only sell it for a project that was worthy of its rarity.

This is that project. And you can be a part of it!

Honouring an Ancient Oak

We want to create an enchanted space where people can gather to share food, friendship, and lively conversation. When we eat together, we raise each other up. Then there’s optimism, there’s power in unity, strength in our diversity.

We will open up the table for community events such as parish picnics, immersion days for the local primary school children, and quiet days when visitors can ditch their to-do lists and simply read, paint, or relax in the dancing shadows of the leaves.

But there’s more: once in a while on one of those rare English summer evenings when the moon is bright and the sky is clear, the woodland glade will become a fairytale space for people to gather. There will be food and fellowship under the trees, the telling of tales and the sound of the harp.

One single moment of enchantment can change a life!

The project so far

Thanks to seed funding from a generous donor, we were able to buy the original oak tree. Its vast trunk was cut into four monumental slabs, each weighing more than a ton.

Here’s a pic of our incredible young carpenter, James Trigg, aka BJ. He has devoted his heart and soul to the heroic task of crafting the Table. Our brief to him:

“You must build it so strong that your new baby’s great grandchildren will be able to turn cartwheels along its length!”

We had a lot of fun lifting the huge slabs of oak onto the completed trestles!

(photo by Claire Shauna-Saunders of Little Ghost Photography)

We’ve just launched the Crowdfunding Campaign (Autumn 22nd 2024). Please click HERE if you’d like to help support The Great Oak Table in the Woods!