WESTMINSTER HALL OAK
Stn,—The column "Country Life," by Sir W. Beach Thomas, is read week by week with great interest and enjoyment by the writer of this letter. In the issue of April 13th, under the heading "Hearts of Oak," the statement was made that when many of the timbers of Westminster Hall were condemned "new oak was supplied from the same Surrey- Sussex forest from which the original beams had come a many hundred years -earlier:"
Was this the only source? For in 1887 in the third edition of a book published by G. McKern & Sons, Limerick, entitled A Historic and Descriptive Sketch of St. Mary's Cathedral, Limerick, the author,- a Rev. Francis Meredyth, M.A., R.D., .Pretentor of the Cathedral, and secretary to the Chapter, on page 377 stated that the timber employed in the building of the Cathedral was the "enduring oak" found in the woods of Cratloe, in the vicinity of the Cathedral, and he goes on to say that some of the oak from the same woods was stated "to have been imported into London by William II for the purpose of roofing West- minster Hall." "Red William," as he was called, obtained it through Turloiigh O'Brien, who was then King of Munster.
• May I, Sir, thTugh you, ask Sir William if he can substantiate. this statement ?—Yours,_ faithfully, . . B. MORLEy NELSON. " Clanamery,” Greenpark, Limerick.
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