Tolpuddle Martyrs' Tree
Local highlightThe old sycamore on Tolpuddle's green where six farm workers met in 1834 and set the trade-union movement going
Open accessNational Trust land — free to wander
On the green in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle stands a sycamore with a story far bigger than its shade. It was here, in 1834, that six farm labourers gathered to talk over their falling wages and swore a secret oath, an act the authorities seized on to convict them and ship them off to Australia. The public outcry that followed won their pardon, and they are remembered as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the men at the root of the British trade-union movement. The tree still stands by the roadside, cared for and pollarded by the National Trust so it does not grow top-heavy, and you are free to stop and see it any time. It sits in the wider countryside of Dorset, and the village’s own Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum tells the fuller story.
