Roos Hall is a 16th-century mansion at Beccles. The oak is called Nelson's Tree in honour of Admiral Nelson's connections with nearby Barsham. In 1924 B. Granville Baker described it in his book Waveney as very old, twisted and gnarled, and said offenders had been hanged in chains from it, and that a chain or two had somehow worked its way inside the trunk.
Folklore reported in the East Anglian Magazine in the 1960s adds that the tree is haunted by its victims' souls, that the apparition of a white lady circles it at night, and that walking round it six times will conjure the Devil.
The hall itself has related stories. Inside a bedroom cupboard there is said to be the imprint of the Devil's hoof burned into the solid brick. A correspondent of the Hidden East Anglia site also passed on a family tale of a window at Roos Hall that can never be kept closed, however it is locked or ironed up. The Hall's main haunting, the existing Roos Hall record, is separate from these tree and hoofprint traditions.
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