5,000-year-old oak tree crafted into table for Queen Elizabeth
Local craftspeople fabricated wood from a 5,000-year-old black oak
into a 42-foot-long table for Queen Elizabeth, honoring the British queen’s 70
th
year as monarch. Black oak is among the rarest hardwoods native to Britain.
After discovering the tree buried beneath farmland in Norfolk in 2012, a group
of privately-funded carpenters took 10 years to complete
the massive table which received a Guiness World Record.
Thousands of years ago, it is believed that rising sea levels in the region
caused the tree to fall to the flooded forest floor, where it was buried and preserved in the peat.
Queen Anne unveiled the table earlier this year at the Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire. It will remain there until March of 2023.