‘Darwin’s oak’ to be felled to make way for Shrewsbury bypass

Campaigners have failed to save 550-year-old tree the naturalist may have climbed as a boy

As an eight-year-old, Charles Darwin may have sat in the shade beneath its boughs and climbed its branches. Two hundred years later, and “Darwin’s oak” has been handed a death sentence to make way for a new road to bypass Shrewsbury.

Along with eight other veteran trees, the 550-year-old, open-grown oak tree, which has a girth of 7 metres (23ft), stands in the path of the planned Shrewsbury North West Relief Road (NWRR), an £80m bypass linking the northern and western parts of the town.