With only two months to go to the start of a new Millennium, I wonder if there is a living thing in the Dales that might have been alive 1,000 years ago?

Maybe one of our churchyard yews or an ancient oak at Bolton Abbey was a sapling before the Normans started to throw their weight about.

The mere thought of Wharfedale on an autumn day, when the countryside wears its Joseph's coat of many colours, was enough to make me turn the bonnet of the car in the direction of the park-like estate that lies between the bridges of Bolton and Barden.

I motored to the A59 beyond Bolton Bridge and left the arterial road for a tarmac way extending through Storiths. It has scarcely outgrown its old status of a country lane and I prayed fervently that I would not meet a cattle wagon.

The road dipped to a ford. Across the Wharfe stood the Cavendish Pavilion. With autumn-tinted woodland all about me, I was in the mood to appreciate an old warrior oak that stands near Lund Farm. I think of it as the Laund Oak, for it grew where once there was a lodge of that name in the old forest of Barden.

The oak is hollow and the remaining wood is wrapped around like a crumpled cloak. I was surprised at the amount of foliage. One branch held a cluster of three oak apples.

Arthur Raistrick, the Dales antiquary, who lived at Linton-in-Craven, was not romantically inclined but during one of our chats he thought of the several remaining ancient oaks of Bolton estate as living links with the period just before the Norman occupation.

Now it was my turn to be romantic. I pictured people passing the sapling as they followed a track through the wildwood. Did the composer Delius, a January child born in Bradford when it was the wool capital of the world, ride his horse by the Laund Oak?

Margaret de Vesci, daughter of Claire, the favourite sister of Delius, told me her mother lived in the Bronte Country and that she and her composer brother had ridden on horseback to Wuthering Heights and to Skipton Castle.

Delius was extremely fond of Barden Tower, once the home of the Cliffords, and he and Claire would here discuss astrology and the Shepherd Lord Clifford's search for the Philosopher's Stone.

The Laund Oak was lucky to escape the browsing of deer. Arthur Raistrick recalled for me when there were about a dozen deer in the park which walkers see as they begin their walk to Simon's Seat.

Red deer provided the Clifford family of Skipton with fresh red meat in winter, when less fortunate members of the populace ate meat that had been salted down. Harry Speight, the Airedale topographer, wrote that in 1654 an agreement was made between Lady Anne Clifford and the Countess of Cork by which a herd of wild deer was driven into the "parke" at Barden, "there to remain until such time as there shall be a parke walled in and made staunch at Bolton or Stedhouse by the Countess of Cork."

Speight, who visited this area in 1900, reported that the 40 head of deer were shy in summer, finding sequestered places on the moors, but descending to lower ground and allowing themselves to be fed in winter.

Another famous old Yorkshire oak, which stood at Cowthorpe, where the River Nidd spills on to the Plain of York, has been dead since the middle of the 20th century. In its prime, the Cowthorpe Oak had a greater girth than the Eddystone Lighthouse and spread its branches over half an acre.

A branch weighing five tons was blown off in a gale in 1718. When the oak was upstanding but hollow, 70 people were able to squeeze into the trunk. Visiting the village in 1973, I met someone who likened grey remains of the oak to a dead octopus.

At a time when the oak was still alive - though "nobbut just" - someone wrote of it as being like a "gnarled old warrior, doubled up with rheumatism". One of the acorns jettisoned by the Cowthorpe Oak grew into a sapling that had become a shapely addition to the scene.

Were these warrior oaks alive in the last Millennium? Perhaps. An area like Barden was a protected environment even in Saxon times, for hunting was a sport for the monied folk before the Norman Conquest.

Robert de Romille was rewarded for his support by being given the Honour of Skipton.

Several small forests or chases in Craven were either created or continued from earlier times. Among them was Barden, which covered much of Wharfedale from about Bolton Priory to the boundaries of Appletreewick, taking in the area where now the Laund Oak impresses us by its conspicuous age.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.