The English folk legend of a shire oak , under the spreading limbs of which the ancient Anglo-Saxon open-air folkmoots and things [ 1] Merry England :
"In olden times the rude hustings, with its noisy surging crowds, was the old popular mode of appeal to the people, voter and voteless, a remnant of Saxon times when men gathered under the shire-oak..."[ 2]
The Shire Oak legendarium has resulted in a number of toponyms in present-day England . Oaks were often markers where three shires came together, as "Three-shire Oaks " at some of the tripoints of England .
In Essex , a venerable "shire oak" was identified at Kelvedon .[ 3] Mansfield , Nottinghamshire , in which county the Shire-Oak Colliery was excavated near Worksop .
Shire Oak is a suburban area within the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall , West Midlands , recognised by the Ordnance Survey.[ 4] Shire Oak School is in Walsall Wood , West Midlands , where there is a Shire Oak Quarry and a Shire Oak Reservoir,[ 5]
Providing a suitably Anglophone toponym, Shire Oak is a neighborhood of San Antonio, Texas and Shireoak Drive is a road in Houston .
Notes
^ Charles Mosley, The Oak: its natural history, antiquity & folk-lore , 1910.
^ George Howell, One man, one vote (National Liberal Pamphlet, 15), in Foreign & Commonwealth Pamphlets , 1880.
^ K.A. Rodwell, The Prehistoric and Roman Settlement at Kelvedon, Essex , 1988.
^ Get Outside Ordnance Survey: Shire Oak, Walsall ^ Shire Oak reservoir Archived 2011-07-23 at the Wayback Machine
