"...to a white oak staddle"
I was having trouble visualizing what this might be until I googled it and fond many references but in particular this one that seems to fit!
"We’ve almost entirely lost it today, though it survived for some centuries in English dialect, most commonly in the south of the country. One sense was of a stump of a tree that was left in the ground after felling so that a clump of thin stems could grow from it, a technique called coppicing. It could also refer to a tree left in place when all around had been felled, so that it would grow to full size, called a standard, unencumbered by neighbours. The link between these senses is that one form of woodland management was called coppice with standards, which combined the two methods. Staddle seems to have been used indiscriminately for both components."