There was an elm tree in the area that is now a car park for Kew Gardens which supposedly was a trysting place for Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester. She would ride from Richmond Palace. Leicester would be in residence, mostly at Syon House on the bank opposite, as the major land owner hereabouts. He had received from the Queen many favours of title, property and whatever else, including: the Syon House estate on the north bank; and, on the south bank, the properties sometime of the Duke of Somerset, the Suffolks and the Greys at Kew, all of which had been his father's; and the lands of the catholic Courtney family.

There was rumour that Leicester murdered his first wife (in 1560) to be free to marry Elizabeth but she suggested he marry Mary, Queen of Scots. He didn't.

Part of the tree was made into a table for the kitchen of Queen Victoria's Osborne House in the Isle of Wight.

O/S Co-ords:1870.7766
Source(s):

Kew Past