Oak is a truly fabulous resistant and strong materials for making many things – furniture in the home is a primary use of oak.   When you think that many of the oldest churches in this country date back to the 13th & 14th centuries and still contain the oak trestles, pews and testers, not to mention the fantastic altar rails and chancels.  I have in mind one particular church that has stood since 1388 and contains the ‘new pews’ from 1642.   This is always the joke. I was on duty as visitor hostess when we opened the church on the morning of the millennium – we had lots of US visitors because there was a memorial for some pilots from the 2nd world war visiting the 98th bombardment stones.   These visitors duly trooped into the church as something to pass the time.  They firstly could not get their collective heads around the fact there was a year 1388 – 300 years before the USA was seriously developing.  Then to be told the ‘new pews’ dated back to 1600s was such a puzzle to them.  But they were more than 300 years after the church was finished so when installed, each one lovingly carved by one man in the village, they were new..  The church was busier in those days and his lovingly carved pews proved to be too few so they just stuck aisle seats to each end of the pews, roughly modelled as an expedient at the time, no one ever guessing they’d still be cherished and smiled at nearly 400 years later.