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To commemorate the freeing of the district in 1258, elms were planted in every corner of the public square where the population came to elect every year their mayor and aldermen on the Pentecost. The last survival of those four venerable elms collapsed the 8th of February in 1876, probably during a storm. The lime tree of Gerouville is in fact an elm. It⤙s probably when the trunk was brought back after a 40-year absence that they didn⤙t exactly remember the real species of the tree... or simply, the square was already called Square of the lime tree (⤜Place du Tilleul⤝ in French)? If we believe an old description: «The elm had a circumference of 25 metres at 1 m from the ground. At 12 m high, it forked in two huge columns which had an elevation of more than 50 metres. The secondary branches had a diameter of more than 5 to 6 metres. One of them, cut down in 1820, gave 67 steres of woods». Be that as it may of this surrealist description and really epic, we⤙ll remember that an ancient elm, with huge proportions used to adorn the square of Gerouville at the 19th century. This tree older than 600 years was bought by a senator and wood merchant who moved the trunk in his property in Brussels where he hollowed it out to turn it to a lodge like the one we can see now in Gerouville. Indeed, it was returned to the district after it had appeared at the world fairs of Brussels and Paris. Standing on the side of the square, it was covered with a thatched roof. This trunk has a circumference of 7m50, an interior diameter of 1m50 and a height of 4m50. That⤙s something to make a picturesque bus shelter of it!

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