The exact age of the Cotton Tree is unknown, but it is thought to have been about 400 years old. The Cotton Tree was also an important landmark for the
Temne people who marked territory based on whether it was visible from the tree. There are many legends concerning the Cotton Tree. Stories relate that the tree was planted by freed slaves from a seed taken from the Caribbean or that a
slave market was held in the tree's shade. The , Cotton Tree was the oldest of its kind in Freetown and one of Sierra Leone's most famous landmarks. It stood in a roundabout near the
Supreme Court building, the music club building, and the
Sierra Leone National Museum, which was established in the former Cotton Tree Telephone Exchange and had "Cotton Tree, Freetown" as its postal address. After Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961, the tree was visited by
Queen Elizabeth II. The Cotton Tree has been celebrated in children's nursery rhymes and was featured in Sierra Leone's first banknotes in 1964. The British ethnographer and colonial administrator E. F. Sayers wrote of the Cotton Tree in 1947: The trunk of the Cotton Tree was reinforced with steel straps and concrete. At some point, it was partially scorched from a lightning strike. It also caught fire in 2018 and again in January 2020. In 2019, the Freetown City Council authorized rental allowances for the relocation of 62 people who had been begging and living around the Cotton Tree. On the night of May 24, 2023, much of Freetown's Cotton Tree toppled over as heavy rain hit the city. On the day of the tragedy, President
Julius Maada Bio mourned the loss, saying there was "no stronger symbol of our national story than the Cotton Tree, a physical embodiment of where we come from as a country". == See also ==