The family of Jill Barklem, the creator of the Brambly Hedge books, have found the real-life tree that inspired the iconic series.

The Brambly Hedge series, famed for its intricate illustrations, began with four books – Spring Story, Summer Story, Autumn Story and Winter Story – chronicling the lives and adventures of a community of mice who live in the idyllic spot the series is named for.

Barklem, who was born in Essex, conceived the books as she commuted to art college in the early 1970s; her journey on the Central line tube “left her feeling that she needed to escape to another world, and that world was Brambly Hedge,” said her son Peter Barklem.

The books were highly researched; Barklem, who died in 2017 aged 66, tried making all the food featured in the series beforehand to make sure the ingredients worked, and many of the locations in the books were inspired by places in Epping Forest, near where she and her family lived.

“One of the most prominent trees I can remember visiting as a child was the Hornbeam Tree, home to the Toadflax family in the books,” said Peter. “I remember it as a gnarly twisted old tree perched above a wooded valley, where below a small stream trickles through tree roots.”

“I had heard rumours that the tree had been lost to a storm a few years ago, but equally I had heard rumours to the contrary”, he added. “I had to go and see for myself.”

Peter was asked to revisit some of the book’s locations for Country Walking magazine, and went armed with his mother’s photographs of the tree from the 1990s and a copy of Winter Story, in which the tree most prominently features.

During the walk he and the Country Walking team discovered the Hornbeam tree still intact, despite the fact that they “expected to be looking for a tree stump rather than a tree, or at best a pile of decaying branches”.

The tree has suffered some damage – the main rear branch is missing due to the storm – but “the profile of the tree as seen in the original illustration is clear to see”. Peter revisited the tree with a biodiversity officer, who aged the tree at more than 400 years old.

“Despite our concerns about the condition of the tree, it was deemed to be in very good health considering the damage, with plenty of new growth in the upper branches,” he said. The City of London Corporation, which looks after Epping Forest, “are now aware of its little literary connection”.

The family hope that a trail that allows people to follow in Jill Barklem’s footsteps through Epping Forest will be created in the future, taking in the locations found in the Brambly Hedge books, including the tree.

“One of the wonderful things about Mum’s books is that you can take them out into green spaces and observe the leaves and flowers in front of you in the same way that they appear on the pages, such was the accuracy of her research and the detail of her illustrations,” said Peter. “They are a great way of interactively introducing children to the changing seasons and the importance of our hedgerows.

“We very much hope that visitors to Epping Forest can retrace Mum’s steps through the forest at High Beech, and hopefully find inspiration from the landscape through the seasons, just as she did all those years ago.”

• This article was amended on 5 April 2023. A previous version misspelt “Brambly” in the picture caption.