Archived on 6/5/2022

Hidden London - The Story of Honor Oak

anon5422159

3 Jul '16

Rising to about 300 feet (just above 90 metres), One Tree Hill has been claimed as the site of Boudicca’s defeat by the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus, but this almost certainly occurred in the south Midlands.

Elizabeth I is said to have picnicked beneath the hill’s crowning oak on May Day 1602. The story is of questionable authenticity but, unlike other such tales, it seems relatively likely to be true. Either way, it is highly doubtful that the queen got drunk and knighted the tree, which has been suggested as the reason why it became known as the Oak of Honor (an old spelling of ‘honour’). In fact, the tree probably marked the southern boundary of the honour of Gloucester’s Camberwell estate.

The present-day Honor Oak Road was the original ‘Forest Hill’, deforested in the 1780s and laid out with homes for prosperous Londoners. A few of these late-Georgian homes survive to the present day, as do some early Victorian Italianate villas.

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anon5422159

4 Jul '16

And now, Honor Oak Park:

http://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/honor-oak-park/

More here…