Gibbet Tree, Capp's Lodge, Fulbrook

Image: © Brian Robert Marshall Taken: 17 Aug 2009

The Gibbet Tree is so named because, in times past, it was used to hang the corpses of executed felons. I found this extract from a book written some years ago, which explains the history better than I can: "The Gibbet Tree a couple of miles beyond Burford, near Capp's Lodge, still stands today, gnarled and crooked branches reach out of the old oak like a witch's fingers pointing to the sky. Witness to the days of the dashing and notorious highwaymen, the stout oak held the bodies of two of the most infamous of them, Tom and Dick Dunsden who, with their brother Harry, terrorized the neighbourhood 'with divers robberies on the King's highway'. Encased in stout bands of iron, the Dunsdon [sic] brothers attracted a steady crowd of onlookers for as long as they were displayed after being hanged at Gloucester gaol in 1784. No doubt the landlord at Capp's Lodge Inn, who had survived a direct shot from one of the gang, made the most of the story and the increased trade as the eighteenth century day trippers tripped across the field to gaze upon the desperate fellows..." Source: 'The Cotswolds, Life and Traditions', June Lewis 1996, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

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